


When In Rome

by Lani



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, OCs up to here, POV First Person, Satanism, some serious brainwashing, vampires making bad life choices, will add characters and ships as they occur
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2018-10-24 10:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10739436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lani/pseuds/Lani
Summary: Santino recounts his life in Rome from the moment he joined the Children of Darkness and sheds some light on his side of the encounters he has had with other vampires.





	1. I. Chapter

The night we reached Rome marked my third year as a blood drinker. Had it been any other night it might have passed me by like so many other mortal anniversaries but this was the night I saw the gates of the Eternal City for the first time. And what a sorry sight it was! Our horses had smelled the foul odors of the city even before we did. They grew restless under us as we passed small farms and abandoned outposts. The meager light of torches flickered against the darkness in a window or two but there was no patrol left who could have lit them. There was no use envisioning the splendor of Rome in ages gone by, a glorious metropolis governed by consuls and emperors. The Rome I found at the end of my journey was a cesspool.

The streets which once had been fabled to be paved with gold and marble were covered in a thick layer of mud and shit. And beneath that? Only cobblestone. Countless houses had been abandoned, inhabiting vulgar criminals instead, and rats. The rats were ever-present, minions of death, my faithful familiar spirits. They bred in wake of sickness and ruin. Their endless scuttling and squeaking near drove me mad. Rome had been struck by the Black Death as mercilessly as any other great city. Even though the years had slowed down the raging of the disease, it had not yet run its course. Death stood on the thresholds like a visitor who had not the civility to take his leave. Bodies piled in the streets, left to rot and for the rats to feed on. The plague had torn a large festering hole into the city. The wound was sick and rank and no one had the expertise to bind it. Only three years ago the pope himself had abandoned the old city, moving instead to a place far in the north, a city called Avignon. Political reasons, so it had been said. But the betrayal of it had been evident. The remaining clergy did their part to keep the sacred places clean and presentable and the great churches still loomed over the cityscape as they had done centuries before, but an inner light had been taken out of the city. What was left was nothing but façade, and the praying priests died just like the peasants.

No doubt there existed streets that dutifully reminded of the Rome of old and its riches, streets that were as large and impressive as they were in the stories about conquering armies and immortal heroes. I pictured hidden places, veiled from the ordinary eye, that opened a passage to crowded forums and lively markets; places that would reveal the glory of ancient times anew. But if those places existed, then we didn’t pass by them. We left our horses by the gate, for some lucky mortal to take them as we had taken them from mortals before. We entered on foot, stealing past the tired gaze of the watchmen without rousing attention. Those who didn’t want to be disturbed would never notice anything.

At once I was given my first lesson in the city. My silent companions showed me which routes to avoid and which buildings I must scale to disappear unseen. I was not strong enough to climb the house walls effortlessly but they told me the strength would come to me in time. I learned at once which entrances to the Cloaca Maxima were unguarded, even forgotten, and which buildings served as hideouts, should the sun catch me unawares. Before we could continue on our way, however, I had to plead for a stop. I was still so young and needed to feed every night. My companions, so I had learned, could stand to go a day or two without. I knew my blood hunger alone would not kill me. I had starved before. But still I pressed them to let me find a victim. If I was to stand before their leader then I would do so at full strength and potential.

My maker had given me very little, but a clear idea of how to choose victims was part of it. It was important to take those that would not be missed; the sick and poor, those that were meant to die anyway. No one would ask after a dead beggar. No town would talk about a drunk who fell into a river to drown. No one would burn your lair with you inside it because an urchin had disappeared.

My companions stood by, muttering among themselves in clumsy Latin as they watched me strike down an old woman, already blind and lame and designated for the grave. Her scream was no more than a gurgling sob. I drank with the greed of a thirsting man, determined to savor every drop. Who knew when I would be able to feed again? The moment I dropped her brittle body, no more than an empty husk to me now, an impatient rustling drew near. A band of rats came scurrying out of the shadows, eagerly feasting on her eyes and lips, gnawing her to the bone only to then burrow into her swollen belly and make a nest in her corpse. I must have watched the display for longer than it seemed to me, but finally Alfredo grabbed me by the shoulder to shake me from my trance. I could still see the grey fur glistening wetly in the moonlight, slick with blood.

“That’s why they think we bring the plague.” The Norseman joked, the round vowels of his mother tongue distorting his makeshift Italian. “We feed the rats as well as any sickness.” I didn’t like Alfredo’s humor, but I had to admit he had a point. It was a harrowing thought; one I couldn’t allow myself for sanity’s sake. Still something inside stirred as I watched the rats. Disease would grow here, in this dead body, like poison weed. And I- I was not allowed to dwell on it. Before I could shake him off Alfredo pulled me back so we could move on.

Next I was taken to the catacombs. They told me in hushed reverent voices of their history, their importance. It was a holy place, an old and secret place. For centuries, they said, their brethren had gathered here, where once the first Christians of Rome, hunted and despised for the truth they spoke, had done the same. Often the pagans of Rome, terrible beasts of unbelievable strength, had tried to drive them out. But they had not prevailed, while their faith had. It was a bleak tunnel through which I was led, carved out of the very earth and supported by stone fragments taken from the profane temples that had once littered the entire city. The torches on the walls spent enough light to see where I was going but it concealed the other blood drinkers that now drew near on silent feet, coming out of their cells and tombs, so certain I was unaware of them. I didn’t dare look around. I matched my steps to my heartbeat, a strong drum in my chest that insisted I was alive even as I was not. I heard their hearts as well, beating in time, so loud and steady I nearly missed the actual drums that sounded in the distance.

I was overcome with such joy it bordered on despair. I wanted to run, to cry perhaps, and flee this place out of shameful fear of what lay ahead. I didn’t know what would happen to me. And as I listened, to the drums, the hearts, the ceaseless thoughts that echoed from the naked stone walls, I realized that they didn’t know either. Their thoughts were so loud, it was a mystery me how they could believe themselves well hidden. They thought like no mortal I had ever listened to. Their mental voices were agitated and strangely disrupted, repeating over and over Latin hymns and distorted prayers. I recognized most of the melodies and this brought comfort. But beyond that there was nothing but fear and dread. I was baffled by this more than anything else. Who could think of the Lord’s kingdom and feel such horror? A hiss grew loud among them, a bodiless whisper: “ _Blasphemer_!”

I flinched and couldn’t help but turn my head in shock and outrage. This time it was Fabrizio’s hand on my shoulder who gently pushed me to keep walking. He said nothing but gave me to understand that all would be well, and that they would come to understand. We walked on through the crowd of voices. Alfredo was on my left, silent Fabrizio on the other side. I didn’t dare speak to them now. I had nothing to say. My heart was so full it strangled the very words from me. I felt such a surge of purpose that I thought it might burst with it, enough to drive tears into my eyes. It was the same sensation I had felt when my companion had plucked me from the ashes of Unulf’s pyre where I had sat to curse him by the hour, full of youthful indignation, that he would abandon me so gracelessly. Of course, I had known he was mad, had been mad when he made me, but that didn’t make the betrayal sting less. He had been all I had known in my new life in Darkness. That was, until they had come to me, drawn by my litany of visions and rambling theologies. I believed I had driven my maker into the flames, had ruined him with my frantic words. That seemed only fair, for he had ruined me first. But still, I feared that madness was contagious, that it would leap from the flames and infest me next. And yet I couldn’t stop shouting at the stars, designing a world order in which we had a place, where we had a choice as any other living creature, where all this wretched misery made sense. Didn’t Satan himself have a purpose and a right to exist? Didn’t we?

I must have been unfathomably loud for them to have heard me from all those miles away. They found me finally, my voice tired, my limbs exhausted, as I lay in the ashes. They never asked what had happened to me, and whose body had been burned there. They simply took me into their arms, promising understanding and belonging. They whispered of God’s fearsome glory and the Devil’s legions, and I told them that I knew. I knew but there was more to it, always more. How I had fallen into their embrace, as if we were brothers reunited after years of war. They had confirmed all I had so carefully imagined. They kissed me, held me tenderly, as they told me that my suffering was now ended, finally ended. They told me I would never again wander lost and alone, that all would be resolved, that they had been looking for me and that nothing was in vain. I cried when I went with them. And this feeling returned to me now, this certainty that all questions would be answered, that I had nothing to fear, except for God and the sun.

“So this is the man you spoke of, this prophet of doom.”

I looked up in wonder, startled by the solid voice that rang out through the chamber we had entered. It was a large hall, held up by smooth pillars and decorated, to my repulsion, with the remains of mortals. The empty sockets of a hundred skulls were staring back at me, silently judging all they saw. Thighbones were strung around the base of the pillars as if to steady them. I couldn’t imagine the purpose of this grotesque display but it caused an instinctive horror in me. I was glad not to dwell on this, for the speaker now stepped into the light. He was dressed in black and filth, unkempt as if by design, but he was nothing like the others. His robes were similar to those of Alfredo and Fabrizio, a monk’s attire covered in dust and dirt. After our long journey, I must have looked quite the same. But he was different still.

He reminded me of my maker, with the way he peered at me through strands of ashen hair, his eyes wide and dull. Blood had dried on his scraggly beard. Sorry as the sight was, he was clearly the leader here. Everyone else seemed to shrink before him. Now I saw that there weren’t very many blood drinkers here at all. Those that had witnessed our arrival had come pouring in after us, closing a narrow circle around us, as if huddling for warmth. There were ten at most, including my companions. Pathetic as the number might seem, it was the greatest congregation of the damned I had ever witnessed and I was awed by every last one of them. The men were as gorgeous as the women, of which there were only two, and that despite their filthy attire and dusty hair. They gathered dust, I saw, as any immobile object might. As their gazes rested on me, I realized it was my turn to speak.

“I don’t call myself a prophet, great one.” I said carefully, a slight frown displaying my insecurity perhaps too clearly. “I would never blaspheme in such a manner.”

“You wouldn’t?” The leader sneered at me, his fangs shining in the strange light. He looked every part the monster I had imagined in my childhood bed at night. He looked like the demon that had taken me from my marriage bed. “Your entire existence is blasphemy, boy.” No one had ever called me ‘boy’ before. A cold shiver ran down my spine as he went on: “Do you deny your nature? That you killed before you came to me and in your thirst cared nothing for the life you snuffed out, like so many candles before? Do you deny that you are a murderer in the eyes of God?”

“No, I-“

“And do you deny that you were given your new life by the unholy union of blood and death? That you were born anew in the body of a dead man, like the rats you so admire?” A wave of rusty laughter went through their ranks in answer to the taunt. I could tell they weren’t used to it and didn’t see the humor now. Perhaps a silent command had given them the cue. I felt sickened and ashamed. “Don’t preach piety to the vermin, boy.”

Even as I lowered my eyes I knew that Fabrizio’s were on me, drilling into my back. I tried to reach out to him with my mind but was brusquely rebuffed. This left me with nowhere to retreat to, and if I did not find courage then I had no business here.  I forced myself to look at them, truly look at them. Their torn clothing made them look like wraiths, truly returned from the grave. Their eyes were bright and burning with zeal. Like the skulls, I thought. They looked just like the skulls on the walls. Under all this horrid otherness, they had the ordinary shape and anatomy of men and women. They had been men and women once. They were waiting for a verdict, for the command to tear me apart. They were monsters, malicious bloodthirsty demons from hell. But so was I.

I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin and fixed the leader with a clear gaze. “I didn’t come to _preach_. I came to do God’s will.” I said, startled as they were by the fire in my words. I could feel their shock like a tactile thing in the room, a blanket that weighed down their thoughts. Good, I needed some quiet to think my own. “I have no interest in your speeches unless they mean to point me to my work. If all you have to give me are musings about my nature as a blood drinker then perhaps I have come to the wrong place.”

This hushed them entirely. I was only glad my voice didn’t tremble where my heart surely did. The leader was studying me, a furtive, calculating look entering his absent stare. Before this, I might have speculated that he was blind, but now it didn’t look that way. He seemed to listen to the drums rather than to me. Life returned to him as a spark in his eyes and I felt strangely naked before him. As if he had gazed into the very depth of my soul. His expression became too familiar, too knowledgeable. I wanted to wrap myself up in my cloak. Then he raised a hand, beckoning me to come closer. “Tell me of God’s will, child. Tell me what you saw. We turn no honest heart away. Come, speak.”

With this he turned away and left the way he had come. A narrow door led out of the chamber, clearly torn out of the stone by unlearned hands. Alfredo and Fabrizio set themselves into motion before I could. They swept me along, took me away from the pitiless stares and confused glances of the congregation. I tried to order my thoughts, devise a strategy, but my mind was empty. I wanted to go back. Back to where, though? That was the question. Back to nothing? Back to the ashes? There was no place I could go. So my steps carried me forward, and into the dark.


	2. II. Chapter

The room we entered was smaller, more private. I could seize it with a single glance. The leader had gone to sit in a large chair, almost a throne, from where he seemed to rule his underlings. He looked too small for it, shrunken somehow. I wondered how old he was and why he could not hold himself better. He had authority, some sort of power the others did not possess with which he could command the others. They feared him. But he didn’t truly fit my idea of a vampire master.

A harsh laugh came from his lips, once more revealing his fangs shamelessly, as if I was meant to take note of them. Suddenly I realized, foolishly late, that this other creature could read my thoughts as easily as I could read those of the blood drinkers around me.

“You are a vain young boy and dare subject others to your vanity.” He accused me, greatly delighted by it. “And yet, what I saw in your heart was pure faith. You will learn. You will learn or we will give you to the flames, as a fitting sacrifice for our Dark Lord. A blood drinker who thinks he is doing God’s will.” He barked that laugh again. I glanced back to the way we had come. The floor had been covered in old ash, that was true. There must have been a great fire roaring in that place a while ago. I shivered at the thought, recalling vividly how Unulf’s body had twisted and contracted in the fire as it struggled with destruction. It had all happened so fast and then he had simply fallen apart, flames licking every semblance of a living creature off him.

“You are unrefined, a diamond in the rough.” He went on, muttering now as if he was only speaking to himself. I didn’t dare look at him, unwilling to see that hungry look in his eyes as he watched my every move. I felt his stare as an uncomfortable prickling under my skin. He wouldn’t stop reading me and I had nothing to protect my mind and heart with. “But how glorious you could be, when we’re done with you, yes, yes. You’ll be a vision. I can see it. I saw your vision, too. Tell me about it. Tell me what you make of it.”

It wounded me to be exploited so effortlessly, so without a second thought. But I had come here to find my place, and I had known that I was fated to live among monsters. I could not fault them for acting monstrously. My heart was beating a fearful staccato in my chest but his was eerily calm. I had never felt smaller or younger than now. I tried to break through the barrier the other had drawn around his thoughts. For a moment it seemed to yield, give way with a creak, but then it snapped back and I was flung back into my own head. The leader gave me an irritated look, once again aware of my attempt.

I hurried to answer, to deflect the accusation I saw building in his eyes again: “It came to me as a dream, always the same dream. I—My maker and I had just left Florence and I had seen the processions there. The plague had struck the city brutally. The graveyards were overflowing, the dead were piling in streets. Worse even then here. It was a city of death and despair. And I saw the people, those that lived among the sick. I saw how they despaired over their dead, shouting for Christ and God and His angels to absolve them, to show them mercy. And as there came no answer, the people grew bitter towards God, they doubted Him. I saw men abandon their families over a cough, over nothing at all, to seek the whores and taverns of the harbor quarters and justify it with the end of days. Mothers wouldn’t touch their own children. The plague had struck the city and her people fell from God. Because the priests couldn’t answer. They couldn’t explain it. They said it was punishment, like Sodom and Gomorrah, but they couldn’t say what for.” I spread out my hands, seeing the scenes again, hearing the cries, the exhausted silence.

“And when I went to my death-like sleep beneath the earth, I saw it. A field of corpses, bloated and rotten, and a dark angel among them, kissing each and every one of them and infusing them with a dark magic so that they would rise again, more beautiful and more powerful than they had ever been in life. The corpses stood up again, and they fell upon their loved ones and their neighbors. They made no difference between man and woman, child and elderly. They killed everyone, as mercilessly as the sickness that killed them. And when the people asked them why, why they killed them, and who they were… They said nothing. There was no answer. But that was the answer!” I halted, staring at the brooding blood drinker before me with big imploring eyes. Couldn’t he see the sense in it? The genius?

“Signore, see! We _are_ the plague. It is us! We are sent by God to test mankind. We must be as the disease. We must kill and spread and never stop, never choose willingly whom we might take. We are the evil that must exist in the world so mankind can choose goodness. This is our purpose. We are more than the damned outcasts who can hope for nothing but the mercy of hell. We have a mission as any creature under God has a mission. We are not lost yet!”

My voice echoed back from the walls to me. I had said those words before but never had I been so aware of my audience. It was one thing to mutter to Unulf, who didn’t see it and didn’t care, and another to speak to those of faith, those who understood rhetoric and who knew the creed by heart. I looked from the leader, who had not moved since I had begun to speak, to Fabrizio and Alfredo, searching for any trace of agreement. Alfredo looked uncertain at best, but in Fabrizio I saw that spark of hope that had kindled this fire in me.

“I could have you executed for your words.” The old one on his throne said thoughtfully, speaking at a tantalizingly slow pace. I tried to catch my breath. I didn’t think he would do that. He was too intrigued. “You speak of God but we are of the Devil. We are Satan’s brood. Do you deny this? Do you think God would have designed us, creatures that prey upon His own flock to live their blasphemous lives in the shadows and the dirt? All we who stand here, every blood drinker out there, exists because he has forfeited his rights to be a man. This is our punishment for our crimes. We are miserable, evil creatures, not worthy of God’s light. Just as our Lord Satan who forfeited his rights to stand in the Lord’s grace.”

There came a murmur of assent from Alfredo and I couldn’t disagree either. Of course we weren’t of God. We were murderers, no better than common animals in our urge to kill and feed. God could never love us as he loved His mortal children. “But is Satan not of God?” I said, desperate suddenly, and terrified that I might have come all this way in vain. That they had ensnared me with promises, played into my loneliness and confusion, only to bring me here to die as a heretic to their own creed. I felt like half a child myself, without a hand to hold.

“If we are of the Devil that means we are of God.” I tried to argue again. “Perhaps this existence of ours is a punishment, yes. But if we serve well, if we serve honestly, and accept our nature wholly, then we should be allowed to prove ourselves worthy,” I broke off when I saw something move in the corner of my eye. Every head in the room turned at once.

Never before had I seen a lovelier creature than her. The woman who entered the room was a slender thing, paler even than the leader, and her blond hair was covered in a thick layer of dust so that it seemed almost grey. She could not have been older than twenty-five in mortal years but on her face time and age blurred to nothingness. Her skin was smooth as marble and in the shine of the torches she seemed to have not a single line around her eyes or mouth. She was like a doll but her eyes were so deep and knowing that I had to drop mine out of shame. Her heartbeat was almost like a tremor that pulsed through the open air and never had I felt such an instinctive fear and respect for another person, mortal or blood drinker.

Her presence overpowered everything else in the room. I couldn’t hear her thoughts and I made no move to try. She deserved better. I had every urge to sink to my knees before her, a reaction the coven master had not garnered from me. I saw the ghost of a smile on her pale lips as she regarded me. Then she raised her voice: “You toy with this young one, Lucio.”

Before the leader, Lucio, could speak she had already turned to me. Her eyes were almost as vacant as his but a lingering sadness gave them a beautiful air of great human feeling. “He wants you, child. More than anything. You say such wondrous things. Will you stay with us? Will you devote yourself Satan?”

“He wants to devote himself to _God_.” Lucio interjected sourly, straining under her presence. I saw at once what was giving him such trouble. She was stronger than him, older too. I wanted to answer to her, not to him. How was he in charge at all if she existed next to him?

“Lucio is right. You are governed by vain thoughts.” She said to me, so softly that it didn’t sound like criticism at all. “But you will learn with us. Oh, Lucio, he is so young. And beautiful, too. He will be perfect. I see Christ’s reflection in him.”

Now it was my turn to give her a look of shock. Speak of vanity! I had to resist the urge to make the cross upon myself to ward off her claims. They were all such grotesque characters. How did I fit in here? I tried to imagine myself as an onlooker, a silent spectator in the room, and see myself through unbiased eyes. What was I here? A zealous young blood drinker, no more than few years in the Blood, and already trying to overthrow old established systems. How they hadn’t killed me on the spot remained a mystery to me.

“Well, do you mean to join us?” Lucio said, suddenly impatient with both of us. I was so taken by rapture and confusion, I didn’t know what to say. She seemed so earnest. She had what I was looking for in everyone I met.  But the ideas that were put to me… I couldn’t agree with that. What did they expect of me, to worship the devil? I shuddered, even as a small voice in the back of my head didn’t neglect to mention that it made no matter if we were truly damned. And if it was so terrible, so unbearable, this demand they made of me, why was I still here? I didn’t want to leave them, not now that I had found them. I could learn to bed down with remains. I could learn to love these vicious creatures that had received me down here. I could learn. How desperate, how weak, how unsurmountable the desire to be with them, talk with them.

“I want nothing more than to stay here.” I admitted. It was an ache in my chest to say it out loud, to see them and know they were my only chance. No one else would ever understand me if they could not. “But how can I? I don’t wish to make an idol of the devil.”

“You will come to see the sense in it if only you try. It would be a shame to lose such a bright young mind to the world. My name is Allesandra.” The woman said then, brushing aside my helplessness with little but a slight moving of her pale hand. The contrast between her skin and her robes was so stark, it dazzled me. “I will never be far from you.” Suddenly she was right in front of me. Her movements had been so steady and smooth, I never even took note. Now here she was, her porcelain face right in front of mine. I could have kissed her forehead if I had dared to lean in closer. I felt her fingers in my hair, merely the touch of a butterfly’s wing to my senses. I was at her mercy.

Her touches trailed down to my cheeks as she looked into my eyes. She cupped my face, her thumbs stroking along my cheekbones. She gazed at me with such tender sympathy, I wanted to sink into her arms and weep, tell her everything right then and there. At the time, I didn’t know how heavy the burden was I was carrying. I did my best to keep them off my mind. I banished the names, the faces. I didn’t recall the sunny days, the voices that crowded in the kitchen. To admit that there had been a kitchen was admitting that there had been a home and in that home, there had been a life and in that life, there had been happiness. I recoiled inside my own body, away from the thought as if I had touched hot iron.

“Don’t cling to it. Release it, let it flow through you, away and away.” She crooned in my ear, as if she knew exactly what agonies bloomed in my soul. She would take a dagger to their stems and slice them off at the root. “God has never answered you either, has He?” Allesandra went on as her hands traveled down to my shoulders in soothing caresses. “When you cried for an answer you received only silence. But you, my child, you made an answer of the silence. Your faith cannot be shaken.” Her voice betrayed awe but I tasted the edge of pity in the words she breathed against my lips. _What are you truly thinking? Who were you before you came here?_

I hadn’t notice how my eyes had slipped shut under the pressure of her comforting voice so near to me, but now I opened them to see her turning back to Lucio, where he still sat. He was tapping a long fingernail against the armrest of his throne, fixing us with an agitated glare. But I only had eyes for the proud arch of her neck, the relievo of her throat, white and glaring in the shadows.

“He will stay.” She declared, taking all of us by surprise. A rebellious part of me meant to object, to prove her wrong. But when it came down to it, I kept my mouth shut. I had made up my mind the moment I had stepped into the catacombs, hadn’t I? If I had wanted to leave, I would have by now. I could feel a wave of satisfaction coming from my companions, who had so faithfully stayed through the entire debate. Now they came to life again, looking up as if they had only just awoken from a long and hazy dream. Lucio nodded his head in agreement to a silent comment I was not privy to. Then he rose to his feet, the long robes flowing down onto the ground again. His feet were bare, as were everyone else’s. This struck me as so odd, I nearly laughed. The nerves, I told myself, no more. I had just signed away my life, or whatever it was I had now that I was dead. I wasn’t happy. I was terrified.

The night was nearing its end and I desired nothing more than to go down into the ground, the way I had been taught to sleep by my maker, and let the black soil stifle my senses. Allesandra and Lucio showed no sign of fatigue. They mercilessly went on debating in old Latin, much purer and clearer than the butchered muddled version of it I still knew from my elders. I didn’t truly speak it, not to the point where I could have conversed with them, but enough to sing the holy hymns in church. I would learn others, they told me. But first they took me from the room, through a series of tunnels I was too dizzy to memorize, and into a crypt. I believed it was a crypt for there were row after row of tombs in the ground and in the walls. It smelled of death here as well, even more so than out in the great hall. The torches that burned here barely touched the suffocating darkness. Curious eyes were peering down at me as I was led to the middle of the chamber. A pair of white claws reached for me when I came to a halt and I flinched away at once. They laughed, in the same misshapen melody as before.

“Are you shy? You will be our brother soon. Brothers don’t have secrets from one another.” Alfredo’s voice hummed in my ear. How it sickened me in this moment. I was repulsed by their eyes on me, their foul breath on me. I wanted Allesandra back. But I was too tired to withstand them and there were five of them. My cloak was torn from my shoulders, ripped to shreds with inhuman strength. Another hand grabbed at my chest, tearing off the cheap buttons that held my doublet together. It was forced off me as well. I could feel the fabric of my hose tear against my skin as it was sliced off. They cut the flesh beneath and I felt a tingling trickle of wetness run down the inside of my thigh. I took good care to keep my face from showing any emotion. Their touches on my body were nothing to me, my body was nothing to me. They undressed me quite unceremoniously, stripping every layer from me with impatient grasps, until I stood naked in their middle. They couldn’t see my horror, my outrage, or else they would turn them into clubs to beat me with. I had to prove myself here. They were like a pack of children, wondering if I would make a good ragdoll. I’d show them a marble statue. I resisted the urge to cover myself and let my hands dangle passively by my sides, meeting every gaze with cool contempt. I let them know I found them pathetic for the games they tried to play. When they were done inspecting me, satisfied it seemed, they handed me an armful of black fabric. They smelled just like everything else here. Worn, dirty, the scent of rot clinging to the fibers. Every sense told me to recoil, to drop these filthy robes. But they had destroyed my worldly clothing before my very eyes. There was nothing else for me to wear. So I slipped them on, retaining my air of quiet dignity even as they meant to prod me with humiliation. Someone had died in these clothes, I suddenly realized. They smelled like the corpses in the streets. That was the familiarity of it. I was wearing a dead man’s clothes! Fool, I chided myself at once. You have been wearing a dead man’s clothes this whole time.

“Where can I rest?” He asked Alfredo who seemed altogether displeased by my conduct. Had he thought I would squirm like a young maid in her wedding night? I raised a brow at the man and waited, all remaining energy put into an expectant aloof air. I had been born among corpses. I had been raised with plague rats as my companions. I was not going to cower for this creature.

They showed me to a hole in the earth which I was to cover with a large stone lid from within. It looked so entirely like a grave that I couldn’t help but hesitate. I had slept in graveyards before but never in an actual tomb. I stared into its gaping maw, blackness creeping up to swallow me. Though unseen, the sun was climbing over the horizon’s edge and my eyes grew heavy, my limbs stiff. I couldn’t stall now. With slow deliberate motions, I climbed into the grave. All around me, my new ‘brothers’ were doing the same, eerily silent. I pulled the stone over the opening, casing myself in. I missed the pressure of earth on my body, against my eyes and in my mouth. The space above me seemed empty, wasted. There was no time for me to think about any of the things that had happened tonight, the people I had met, the discoveries I had made. I would leave it to my dreams to make sense of this for me. Already I felt sleep’s heavy hands on me, forcing my eyes shut and my body to freeze with my consciousness trapped inside to wander aimlessly.

The last thing I knew was Allesandra’s tender voice whispering in my mind. By the time I was asleep, I had forgotten what she said to me.

 


	3. Chapter 3

My studies began the very next night. The sinking sun had left Rome behind as a cold deserted shell of its daylit busyness. Even the few streets that were still good enough to serve as functioning infrastructure were left to the shadows and straying vagabonds. The windows were empty and dark, the piazzas abandoned. The city had retreated into itself, leaving whole blocks and districts to rot like the dead limbs of a leper. A lonely wail echoed through the alleys above. Below, I woke in my tomb, startled by the grating of stone moving overhead. Someone was pushing aside the lid of my grave now and a sliver of weak torch light came falling down on me. I watched the particles of dust that floated through the air as if they were stars. I wished there had been a slow awakening, the events of last night restoring themselves in my memory piece by piece, at a pace I could stomach. But even in my dreams the certainty of where I was and the great unknown that lay before me never left. I woke and I knew where I was, and I knew why.   
  
As my sleep had been reaching its end, a wave of despair got hold of me at last. Surrounded by strangers, strangers who were the closest thing to kin I had in this half-life, I finally realized the extent of my loneliness. My maker had pressed me to regard my transformation as a second start. Born to Darkness, he had called it. So this was the darkness, and I had only been born three years ago. I was an infant again, and what was worse: I was an orphan. This was the darkness and I was its child. I searched for a path in this foreign world that only reminded me of my old one in part. Even now that I had found a place to stay, I was alone. I was nothing, I owned nothing. I didn’t even own the clothes I wore on my body. By every right, man-made or God-given, I was not a man. And who were these creatures I had been bound to in my otherness? Now, now, I tried to console myself. If you had joined a monastery instead as you so often imagined in your mortal youth, you would have felt quite a similar despair now. That pain was only the worldly roots, being pulled out of me. But as a monk, I would have had God for comfort. Surrounded by the fearful and the fearsome, these dirty beasts that slept among rotting corpses and considered Satan their lord and master, I didn’t dare pray out loud. God had never been farther from me than here where I had gone to find Him again, and I wanted to weep.  
  
When the pale ghastly face of another blood drinker appeared above to stare down at me, I was already staring back. Our eyes met, locked onto each other. At once his mind came pouring into mine, like sand that ran through an hour glass. Giacomo, they called him. It wasn’t his true name, the name his mother had given him as she had bopped him on her knee in the small cottage where they had lived, some place in the north called Burgundy. He was young, I realized. Not as young as me, but not even fifty years in the Blood himself. His mind was a great confusion of creeds and beliefs. What he had been taught as a child and what he was taught here clashed at every turn. He was suffering here, suffering because he couldn’t accept his nature. I saw in him an aching desire to deal the pain he had endured. He thought he could hand it over to another, like a burden he was too tired to carry. Gladly he did as Lucio told him to. He sang the hymns, he agreed when the sign was given and did what needed to be done. Because what was worse than being lost? Being lost on your own.  
  
“It’s time.” The blood drinker announced to me with gleeful finality. Perhaps he sensed the spark of fear that let my heart contract painfully at his words, but the tooth-filled grin he gave me broadened, splitting his face apart like an ugly crack in a porcelain plate. I said nothing as I climbed out of the grave, a stray hand steadying my back so that I would not teeter on the edge. The dirt had rained down on me all day, shaken loose by the thunder of passing carriages and carts on the street above. I wondered where exactly our lair was. When I tried to brush off the layer of dirt on my robes and hair, one of them stopped me. It was fitting for us. We couldn’t walk around like our mortal victims, proud and clean. I wondered if these vampires had ever met a peasant of Tuscany. We were vermin, they insisted, and we should not make caricatures of ourselves by trying to look like men. Everyone would laugh at the vampire that primped and preened, painting his lips and rouging his cheeks like a cheap mummer, to go out and talk with mortals as if they were our kind. Mad, they said. Blasphemous, they cackled. The images they drew for me, of these creatures that dolled themselves up and went out to sit in mortal company, pretending to drink from cups and eat from plates, were truly amusing. I couldn’t help but laugh with them. It was so ridiculous, the very thought, and it felt so good to share in their amusement, even if it was only scorn. But the truth was that I was more dismayed by their rules than I cared to admit.  
  
I never had had a lot of money. My mortal life had not been lived in poverty, but I couldn’t have imagined the luxury of indulging myself as shamelessly as the lord and lady of our town. I still recalled my wonder, the sting of envy, as they had ridden out of the keep to observe the Fair in the streets, their fur trimmed coats billowing, the brightest colors, the finest lace. Well, I thought bitterly, the wound in my chest bleeding anew. What good did their silk and velvet do them now? They were dead as all the rest. I, on the other hand, had discovered one of the sparse perks of my new life as a damned creature. Unulf and I had stripped the first victims we had slain together of their garments and for the first time I had seen myself in fine wool and lace.   
  
To abandon this tiny pleasure so soon after I had known it, stung. Of course the self-hatred in their words didn’t pass me by unnoticed either. It was a common theme, and one I could all too easily agree with. We were parasites, murderers, thieves, demons, monsters. We didn’t deserve the effort it took to kill us. Evil through and through. It hurt me to hear all my secret thoughts echoed back from the mouths of strangers. I didn’t want this to be the truth, the sum of our experiences. How could I live this life without any hope? Hope for what? Down here it was so difficult to think about it. The very earth overhead seemed to suffocate all higher thoughts. Live long enough in these catacombs, I thought, and your mind would end up crawling on all fours like a common beast. And you would be no better.  
  
After everyone had woken from their sleep (I learned that no two blood drinkers returned from their daylight death at the same time) I was brought before Lucio again. He looked exactly the same as in the moment I had first laid eyes on him. If you never experienced it you cannot imagine how unsettling this air of permanence was. He sat on his throne, in the same sunken position as last night, and he was once again staring at me as if his eyes meant to burn holes into my very soul. I wanted to put on a brave face, show him that I was not his to play with as he saw fit. But I was hungry and frightened by the skulls that stared at me with just the same intensity as their master.   
  
“Now you look more like yourself.” Lucio praised my neglected state, making it half a mockery. “A saint of dust and dirt.”   
  
I bristled. Wouldn’t he let go of that at all? What an appalling character he was. I could not describe the ways in which he repulsed me. It was not his appearance or his behavior so much as the underlying assumptions he made about everything he saw and thus cemented as truths to his view. He wasn’t incapable of understanding, or even intolerant of, other ideas. He simply worked them into his beliefs so effortlessly, as if they had been part of the design from the start. The beginning and the end of all things was Satan. And the rest of the world would have to exist within that scope.  
  
“I am no saint.” I said bitterly, insisting perhaps senselessly. “I never claimed to be.”  
  
“No, the saints are our enemies. And you better remember that. You carry God in your heart and there He will strike you down, smite and burn you. Foolish child, deny Him and be free.”  
  
“Can I feed first?”   
  
I caught a wave of amusement from behind me, some unnamed listener, and it served to bring the ghost of a smile to my lips, “Where is Allesandra?”  
  
“That should be none of your concern. You have work to do.”  
  
Lucio reached up to his straggly hair and brushed it from his eyes with an almost coquettish flick of his wrist. “I spoke with her already and she advocated for you quite passionately. I will take you in, as my own. Perhaps she is right and you were meant to find us, perhaps Satan willed it. Now your heart needs to be cut down to size. I want that fire in your soul, boy. I want it to burn like a beacon for all the world to see. But first we must feed it.” He announced, visibly pleased, and turned to the men behind me. “Giacomo, Aurelio. Take him to the cell.”   
  
A jerk went through my body when I was suddenly grabbed from behind. Strong hands grasped my arms, keeping up their iron grip no matter how I struggled against them. Like vises, their hold only grew tighter the more I tried to twist out of it. The pressure built mercilessly, until I thought my bones would snap like dry twigs in a fire. I cried out in pain. “Let go of me! Stop, tell them to let me go!” I demanded, outraged rather than horrified. “What cell? I committed no crime!”  
  
Relentless silence met my panicked words and futile attempts to escape. I was dragged away, through the large cavern and its bone-clad columns, and down a tunnel that had my voice echo back to me in haunting melodies. It was utterly dark but I could hear the metal shriek of old iron scraping across the sandy ground. Then a hard hand gave me a shove, right between my shoulder blades.   
  
I staggered forward and stepped on something soft, something crinkling. My eyes strained and when a torch was lit for me, flooding the darkness with orange light, I saw what they had given me: A cell full of parchments. My breath rattled in tiny echoes from the stone walls as I turned, searching for the threat. But there was nothing here but scrolls and thick bound codices. In my confusion I picked up one of the text, feeling the brittle texture of the thin page under my fingertips. It was such a strange sensation, to be surrounded by writing. My eyes passed over the drawn letters in quiet frustration, without taking any of them in. These were useless. I couldn’t read. I was no scholar.   
  
“What is this?” I turned in anger at the games they would play with me. Just as I came to face the two others I saw that they had locked the cell behind me. Instinctively I reached for the bars, grasping it in a white-knuckled grip. “What kind of punishment is this?”   
  
“None at all.” Aurelio, a strangely youthful vampire with a head of thick black curls and piercing green eyes, was the one that spoke and I saw a spark of envy in the way he studied me. I caught the feeling as if it was a pebble he kicked at me in childish petulance. “Here we keep the writings of those that came before us, records of times gone by. You will read all of this. You are ignorant and unlearned. Lucio will teach you. This is your cell now, and these writings are your daily bread. You will not feed until you have read all of it.”   
  
I felt my eyes widen in shock. “No,” I objected sharply and pulled at the bars. They creaked in protest but wouldn’t give way. “No, I can’t read! You bastards, you’ll starve me!” I felt an overwhelming fear crawl up my throat, strangling me from within. I couldn’t starve again. I couldn’t thirst again. My knees grew weak just to recall the sensation. Already the awareness of my hunger rushed back to me. I felt a dryness in my mouth that surpassed every need for drink I had ever felt. In its wake, I tasted the cold foul flavor of dead and diseased blood, the blood of corpses I had drunken in my despair. I caught the glimpse of Giacomo’s smug smile and felt the desire to lunge through the cell and tear off his head. What did he know of suffering? What agony in the world could outweigh my own?   
  
“Then you would do well to learn fast.”  
  
They left me with the torch on the wall, well out of my reach, and the piles of parchment to stare at. For the longest time I did nothing but listen to their receding steps and the fading timbres of their thoughts. A fit of rage held me in its grip and it was all I could do to not tear the writings apart. Instead I picked up the scroll again and got to work. No doubt that if I damaged anything here they would just leave me in this cell to die. If I even could die. A terrible thought, to be entirely removed from death, to live and live no matter how unbearable. Terrible enough to steer my mind towards the task at hand. I didn’t know where to begin. I forced my eyes to focus on the written words. I had seen letters before, on messages that changed hands and on the pages of the Holy Book where it had been displayed in our town’s church. I could more or less sign my own name. So now here I was, fighting my building thirst and faced with an unsurmountable obstacle.   
  
Or so I thought. To my amazement, the longer I stared at the text the more I recognized the patterns. It was as if a wall of bricks was slowly arranging itself in front of my eyes, falling into place stone by stone until everything was in order. I could barely breathe. The words were like pearls on a thread, just one shiny bead after the other. Together they turned into a perfect construct of syntax and semantics. I felt dizzy. My mouth was hanging open and for these blissful moments, my thirst was forgotten. _I could read._ Every moment I had stared at these alien symbols accumulated in my mind, perfect replicas, so that I could even determine the meaning of writing I only recalled in distant memories. Bible verses, scribbled notes, hymnal lyrics. A breathless laugh played on my lips, utterly misplaced but this revelation was oh so sweet…  
And so I read. I scoured these texts for every scrap of knowledge and there were so many. I read manuscript after manuscript, not even revised copies but the originals from the authors’ feather. They were mad ramblings mostly, theories and scrawled down fever dreams. But what they revealed to me was heart-stopping. What they wanted me to read was the history of our own kind. Every text mentioned blood drinking creatures in some form or others and these writings spanned centuries!   
  
Beyond that, I found travel reports and highly confidential documents concerning exorcisms and dark magic. I learned about the vampire plague in _Siebenbürgen_ , a remote area in the Carpathian Mountains, and the many superstitions that ruled the people there. Holy water, crucifixes. Yes, our enemies. I was to learn what it meant to be a blood drinker and Lucio could not have chosen a more impressive method to teach me. I had known so little aside from the town where I grew up but the world was large and I read about near every known corner of it. Beasts roamed the ruins in the woods, beasts who returned each night from their graves to kill cattle and peasants alike. They ran screaming and howling at the word of Christ and wept in fear and holy terror when the Bible was raised against them like a shield. They burned and melted when sprinkled with blessed water and bled poisonous blood when touching the robes of a priest.   
  
I read of these ghastly creatures and then of blood drinkers that were again more civilized, more like myself. They had lived in the far east, gathering around an ancient creature that had spoken directly with the words of the Serpent. A Nameless One who had been the chosen mouthpiece of Satan, returned from Hell and eternally blackened by the fiery pit. There were small notes on the backs of torn pages that told of a voyage to Rome, to these very catacombs, to meet with powerful pagan blood drinkers, monsters that were raging in this very city, tearing it to pieces in their clutches and hunting like rabid beasts in the streets. There was no mention of a return from the encounter. I was terrified at the thought that those heathens, those monsters, might still roam the earth, unseen, unknown, waiting to strike.  
  
No matter how spell-bound I was by my studies, eventually my thirst burned up every new word I read. Like a furnace in my chest, it devoured every thought I could have had that was not turned towards the blood. I was reading the same sentence for the tenth time but the ache in my body overwhelmed my efforts with ease. I was thirsty enough to start fantasizing about pulsing veins and bared necks. I saw it pour like I had once thought of clean water, sparkling in the sun. I shivered as if a chill had passed through me and massaged my throat, pretending it would soothe the pain I felt.   
  
Eventually my thirst outweighed my discipline. I abandoned the texts and threw myself against the iron bars instead. “Help!” I cried, feeling the fool for it. “Please! I’m reading it, I understand! I read it, but please let me drink! I can’t go on without it!” I screamed for Lucio and Aurelio, for Giacomo, Fabrizio and even Alfredo. No one listened, no one answered. Finally I succumbed to my innermost desire and called for her.  
  
“Allesandra! Please, you said you’d be with me!” I rattled the bars and listened to my voice fade in the distance. Had I been loud enough? Had she heard? I kept seeing her tender face, the soft loving sadness in her eyes. She would not abandon me to this madness, surely. She wanted me to be with her. No one but her had the reason I needed, the compassion in the cruelty. Would she not take pity? “I’ll do anything you say, I’ll believe what you wish, I’ll march under your banner. Just come to me!”   
  
To cut it short: She would not come to me for another three nights. I had curled up among the papers like a sick dog, clawing at the dirty ground as if to dig my way to freedom. I had taken to cutting at my own wrists to drink the thick black blood that beaded there but it was empty and bland and only served to fuel my hunger for the thing I craved. I even began to pray for rats to come by. I could catch a rat, drink it dry. Bury my teeth in the dirty fur, feel the animal squirm and struggle in blind panic. And drink, yes, drink, drink every drop. But my cell was kept clean of all vermin, save myself and I had begun to crawl on my hands and knees by then.   
  
I spoke to God on the first night, to myself on the second, and to the Devil on the third. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the demons I had read about. In flashes of cold panic, they came to me, staring with their empty hungry eyes, whispering of their eternal punishment. I saw the hellfire in which the elder had burned and learned the truth of our abysmal breed, this Great One who had been torn to shreds by the beasts of the forest who preferred to worship trees and stones, who closed their eyes and ears to the truth. The truth. How sweet it tasted, how it soothed me. I had everything I needed to believe it right here. I knew the truth. Thirst and nightmares mingled in me and I spun from them my new world view. Lucio had been right. I was laughing but it sounded like rust being scraped off old door hinges. Lucio and Allesandra had been right. We were of Satan, had to be. Satan was our Lord and we were his minions. How could we be anything but when we crawled on the ground like worms and were driven to madness by the lack of innocent blood to fill our mouths?  
  
But even though they were right, they were also short-sighted. Did they think our work was done by sitting underground and worshiping the beast in small congregations? No, I saw the bigger picture. I thought of my visions. Disease and despair, spreading from town to town, the cries of the dying and the damned resounding through the entire European continent. The thirst was clawing its way through my brain. I thought I could hear them. The entire damn world, screaming. Me, screaming. It amounted to the same.  
  
“My sweet child, it is enough.” The voice came to me as through a thick wall of fog. I wanted to weep but I had no tears to shed for her. “Come to me, come. We brought you blood.” She sounded like a siren calling to me from her sea-battered rock. How I wanted to go to her, but my legs wouldn't move on my command. I heard the creak of the bars swinging open. Through the haze I saw that Allesandra’s shape was distorted by the young woman she had in her arm. She was scantily clad in a short tunic that revealed her black and bruised thighs and knees. The girl was so drunk she could barely stand. One of her arms was bent at an unhealthy angle.   
  
Lucio stood behind them, staring at me with a peculiar fire in his gaze, some blend of fascination and wariness. I had no eyes for him. They prodded the girl, a prostitute I realized, into my cell. She mumbled something that was likely meant to sound inviting. She didn’t know where she was or what would happen to her. Without any ado, she bared her breasts to me. They were flea-bitten and sagging from the weight of the milk she carried. She was leaking through the fabric and the sweet smell of it repulsed me. My state of madness didn’t seem to matter to her, perhaps she was too dazed to notice. She simply expected me to have my way with her at once, and so I would.  
  
Her body broke under mine. She was so fragile, I snapped her like a twig in my arms. She cried out in pain and I drove my fangs into her neck. I tasted a lingering sickness in her blood, not the Black Death, not that, but something else that would have killed her sooner or later. Most likely. I would not want anyone to believe that this mattered to me or eased my conscience. My conscience didn’t exist anymore. All I wanted was to drink, to have her and have her until she had nothing left to give me. I was cruel to her and I knew this. But her blood was everything I had ever wanted. I thought my heart would break with the love I felt for this miserable stranger. Finally I had to pace myself so not to overchallenge her heart. I couldn’t take too much too quickly or else she wouldn’t last. Her heart pumped out a frantic staggering rhythm and pushed more and more blood into my mouth. I couldn’t even care that my torturers were watching me. A deep guttural moan rose in my throat to meet the rushing blood. A fire was dying in my chest and with every flame that suffocated I regained a piece of myself.   
  
When she was spent I let her slip from my grasp and rolled away, onto my back, to gasp and weep with relief. Clarity, blessed clarity. Ah, and in this clarity, I heard the bars swing shut again. I began to laugh and hum. It was a hymn that had always struck terror in my mortal heart, but now it sounded like a long-awaited promise. I saw it now, the melody on my bloodied lips and the earth above. This world was doomed and God’s wrath would reign eternal. We were all so wretched. But while the mortals were to suffer the brunt of it, _we_ were the lashing whip. Glory, glory, glory! My heart beat eagerly with its renewed strength. Here, in this cell, surrounded by wisdom and knowledge, I found what I had been searching for. I thought of the Nameless One, the founder of this cult, who had seen so clearly what everyone else had forgotten. How I wished I could speak with him, this genius who understood the true meaning of our existence.   
  
In my musings and reflections, I didn’t notice how Lucio tried to speak to me, subject me to his half-finished philosophies again. I didn’t want to speak to him. I was far away. Allesandra eventually took him by the arm, said to leave me alone now, said I was destined for greatness. How right she was!   
  
_My sweet dusty angel, my Allesandra. Come back soon, come back and let me tell you of the truth I found in these writings, in my suffering._  
  
There was so much work to do.


	4. Chapter 4

The next time they came to me, I noticed them at once. I had been waiting for them. With eyes like the holes in the skulls, I watched them gather in front of my cell, stare and mutter like so many clueless politicians. Their faces were nothing but paintings on parade, white flames flickering in the dark. The visions had returned to me one night, fueled by hunger and despair as they had been the first time. The images were clearer now, raw and insistent. They pulsed before my inner eye like a beating heart, pumping black blood into my mind to drown out all but the most important imperatives. We were chosen to do this work, this unholy work, this ungrateful work, because we had in our hearts the strength it needed to serve the deceiving Satan without being deceived. I alone had seen the truth of it, the genius in the design. It was complete now.

Oh, my philosophies were still childlike in simplicity, still rough and unrefined. But steadily it unfolded, took shape before my eyes. This gift, this Dark Gift, was our calling, and through it we should become a vexation without explanation, without meaning. We would tempt and test mankind’s faith in God. We should kill the least deserving, the least expectant, those with full lives and full cheeks, red blood blushing. All of it was one great silence, and the cry for help that echoed within it forevermore. I knew now what every monster knew: No prayer in all the world had ever been answered.

“What is he talking about?”

“He must have lost his senses. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Give him time.”

Their voices fluttered around my head like annoying mosquitoes. The humming grew in my ears until I thought I could swat at them to silence their constant droning. Of course there were no insects here, only worms. I found this strangely unfitting. There should be flies blackening the air, crawling over my skin to search for dead tissue. Flies scurrying across my face, to my eyes to lay their eggs, to make the maggots that would eat my flesh. But no, nothing except the murmuring voices from beyond the iron bars. When I reached down to steady myself, seeking to press my palm against the cold ground, I touched hair instead. Startled, my head turned to see what I had so briefly forgotten. Ah yes, of course there had to be a cause for the rancor. I was no longer alone in my cell. The woman I had slain in my ravenous madness; they had left her by my side for company. She turned my stomach, the way she lay there in her own filth, bloodless and swollen, her blank eyes dull and sunken. I had made this grotesque of her. She had been a living creature once, filled with thoughts and feelings. And now she was nothing, only a carcass for the dogs to eat. And in my head the quiet whisper: _This could be you, this could be you. Be grateful it isn’t._

 “You chose the wrong one, Lucio. Look at him. Not a proper thought in that skull of his.”

This finally moved me. I reacted as if lashed by the whip. I flung myself against the iron bars, dirty fingers wrapping around them as if to tear them apart. My stare was fixed on the vampire behind Lucio, the doubtful one. For a brief moment, I saw myself through his eyes. I saw the bent filthy creature, clinging to the bars of its prison, dusty face pressed against them as if to slip through. Blood had dried on my lips, this madman’s lips. My eyes were vacant and large, glaring through a curtain of dark tangled hair, a strange intensity in them that unsettled him. I wouldn’t have known it otherwise, but I was smiling. It was a jarring thing to see. It wasn’t a smile at all, rather a baring of my teeth, fangs shining wetly. But it was only a moment and I couldn’t care. The sorry creature before me was too striking to ignore.

“You,” My voice was a whisper, strangely hoarse even to my own ears. The thirst had taken even the timbre of my voice. Oh, but he needed to know. I needed to tell him what I so clearly saw and he so tried to forget. Such joy, to see him struggle against the end that was awaiting him. He wasn’t even stupid enough to fool himself. God willed it. He should rejoice. He should be thankful. “You will not last. In two years’ time, you will have jumped into the fire.”

Surprised eyes turned to poor little Giacomo who was so lost and rotten. I reached through the bars, my fingers turning into curved claws even as I pointed at him. I felt powerful, here in my cell, my grave. They all seemed so fragile to me, so small and irrelevant. All had been revealed to me and I could only look upon my poor wretched brothers with the pity of the wise. They muttered among themselves like old housewives and had nothing to say. “Satan will devour your heart. You cannot believe. You cannot be what God made you. You will burn in Hell.”

How they rejoiced when I spoke our infernal master’s name. How blind they were. But I would make them see. “Yes, yes, he will drag you to the fiery pit one night. You will wake but you will not wake, and you will walk straight into the fire. You believe nothing. You are nothing.”

“He is mad!” Giacomo exclaimed, so obviously touched by my words. His voice was colored bright with fear. “Do away with him!” I shouted to drown him out. Don’t let the heretic speak. He had his chance and he had chosen to decline. They were so small-minded, so gentle-hearted. They could never fix what was broken in this corrupted world, this world filled with godless monsters who charmed mortals and killed softly. They weren’t strong enough. But I was. I had been chosen by Death himself.

“You seek to honor our Lord, Lucio, but you haven’t the heart to cut the rot in your own stand. You chose badly indeed. You chose the weak-willed, the selfish critter, the lazy and the gluttonous. We must have purity, Lucio. We must have chastity. Satan demands no less of us than God!”

Lucio looked downright gleeful. He actually clasped his hands together like a child as I spoke. I waited impatiently. A shine had entered his eyes. If I hadn’t known better I would have said he might cry. He seemed so grasped by awe and pride. He thought I was his creation. But I knew better. I knew who my Maker was, my unholy Creator. God had willed it. God had willed me. His turned back did not give us free range, to madly go where the wind would take us. Oh no. We were children all and like dutiful sons we would carry out the task bequeathed to us by our Parent.

My eyes darted to the side, catching the sliver of pale hair beneath her hood. Allesandra was watching me, her face a mask I could not have deciphered. But what I did read set my soul ablaze. A wave of great power surged through me the instant our gazes met. Between us passed a moment of great intimate understanding and when I would later speak to her of it she would never fail to recall what I meant. We felt it both. We felt that a change was coming, a change of belief, a change of heart. Lucio’s undoing had come in through the front gates and he had given it all it needed to do its work.

But first I was finally released from my cell. Allesandra’s arms opened for me and I came to her at once. Like a mother, she wrapped me up in her embrace and I rested against her sturdy frame. She was like marble to my young deprived senses: cool and smooth and soothing. I marveled at her age again. For I knew she must have seen centuries come and go. More than Lucio, more than Unulf, more than any other damned creature I had ever seen. I ached to speak with her, tell her all I had learned in the cruel tutelage of thirst.

How knowledgeable I thought myself, how very naïve I must have seemed to them. Speaking righteously of God and Satan only to then rush to my elder’s breast like a frightened child and hide my face from them. But she held me, she caressed me even now. I was far taller than her, broader too. I was, after all, a grown man, formed by hard work from childhood on. My arms swallowed her up with ease. I had to bow my head to allow her hair to shield me from the world like a dusty curtain filtering the torch light. Still her strength was insurmountable. I knew she could have torn me to pieces if she ever thought it necessary. But she didn’t. She never had. Her fingers found the top of my head again and she stroked my hair as gently as she had on the night we met. She was so tender and soft and feminine in her piety, in her zeal that tolerated every horror, how could I not have loved her on the spot?

It was she who sent me out into the city with my new brothers once my raging thoughts had calmed and the ecstasy that had seized me faded from my senses. I was to hunt with them and learn the secrets of this old city. When I returned from my fast, tattered and soiled, the others received me as warmly as if I had been their dearest friend. I was embraced by one and then another, my cheeks were kissed, my hair caressed. Something must have changed in the nights, a week or two, that I had spent in solitude with only the corpse to talk to. And I had spoken to the dead. It was a good thing they had come to collect me before the dead began to answer.

I seemed more fully accepted now, no longer the stranger, the unknown fledgling with his head full of God. A sheer endless row of questions was put to me, not a thing they didn’t mean to ask about. How did I feel? What had I read? Did I have another of my visions? Was I enlightened? Had Satan come to speak with me? I noticed that Giacomo did not join us in the hall where we meant to prepare for our departure. Aurelio came to me in his stead and clapped his hand on my back in a fraternal manner.

“You frightened them well, brother.” He praised. Alfredo and he shared a sly look between them that they thought I hadn’t seen. “You must tell us everything you learned.”

“Where is Giacomo? Not with you?”

“Oh, you frightened him best of all. He will catch up with us later. Did you truly mean what you said about him? Lucio seems to think so.” Alfredo chimed in now, sliding up against me from behind until I was caught between the two vampires. Jealous, petty creatures. I could feel the sting of their thoughts as if they weren’t even trying to veil them. They were unsettled, nervous even. The cell they had locked me in to die of thirst and knowledge, had always been closed to everyone but Lucio and Allesandra. To keep the cultists from learning those secrets, I realized. That was why it had been designed to be a cell in the first place. Not to keep prisoners in, but to keep others out. So why, why had Lucio decided to give me this knowledge, let me spin my mad theories, cement my creed? They were worried about this but I was not. It was only right that I should be the one to read those texts. I could understand what smaller minds wouldn’t grasp. I was chosen for greater things.

The surge of purpose and vanity dizzied me. It tightened my throat until I thought I would choke. How shameful now that my mind was clearer, this thought that I would presume such things about myself. Pride, my cardinal sin. But I had to believe this. I had to. There was no other way to shoulder this fate that had been bestowed upon me. I thought of the prophets and saints I knew. Each and every one had suffered immeasurably, had lost and lost and lost until all they had left was God. So why should my loss be less? Why shouldn’t it mean something? I was chosen for the Dark Gift, among all the dead and dying. I was chosen for the cell, among all the faithful followers. I was chosen for this horror story, this bloodied fairy tale, this unwritten Bible verse.

“What are you waiting for? Come.” Fabrizio’s voice pulled me from my reverie. Aurelio and Alfredo had released me, dragged along by some blood drinker or other. Fabrizio was by my side, seeming softer now, and with a steady hand on my back guided me out of the catacombs. We followed my new brothers out into the city. The moment I stepped into the light of the clouded night sky, I felt a wave of new scents wash over me. Only now did I realize how I reeked, of earth and dried blood and death. I smelled like a corpse, and so did my brothers. I wished for water suddenly. There used to be a river I had once known but the Tiber of Rome was as dirty as its people and I would not have stepped into it for any price. So our foul odors were a shroud to us, covering us like a banner. It wasn’t as if the streets smelled any better than us. Fabrizio was the oldest and most experienced, so he led us. We loped through the urban labyrinth like a pack of young dogs. We ran and leapt, delighting in the company of those that were our own kind. You must understand that no previous or following horror could have outweighed the joy of their presence now. I didn’t care for the cruelty they harbored, the pleasure they took in dealing pain like children tearing out the legs of a spider. I didn’t care that they were strangers and monsters. I was one of them and I wanted to test my strength in their midst. I wanted them to be mine.

We were nothing like the Children of Darkness, a strict congregation that only knew abandon on the nights of the Sabbath, we would later become. We were loud and blundering as we scaled house walls and balanced on the roofs. It was as if the sight of the open sky kindled a great fire in us, and I who had missed the stars so dearly in my cell, was likely the loudest of all. We killed easily and brutally, and without a care. Alfredo liked blondes for they reminded him of the girls in his village. He said Italians were too short, too plump and dark. He liked them swan-necked. He liked their necks broken.

I shared victims with others, as if we were drinking from the same cup. I drank too much. I was drunk. I let the blood run over my chin for the feeling of it. As I watched them, as I joined them in their revels, I devised a system of sins and virtues in my mind. I wondered which of these things we did were truly in the service of the devil –as all we did should be. I couldn’t love the ruthless lack of restraint. I couldn’t enjoy their violence even as I held down the shrieking mortals they meant to torture for sport. Still I decided that to deal pain was necessary, for mortals should die in fear and agony. It should be a demonic death for it was a demon who brought it. So this I condoned despite my aversion to it. It wasn’t as if I had ever learned how to kill any other way. The idea to use my gifts to calm and soothe my victims had never even occurred to me. This surely said a thing or two about my nature and the world I had been born into.

What I truly despised was the unnecessary gluttony to it, the selfishness in their desires. They spoke to me of blasphemy but thought to have their games with corpses and madmen. They spared the ugly only because they didn’t appeal to them and chose women over men because they liked their dying struggle better for their dancing curves. This needed changing. This needed discipline. It lacked method, it lacked dignity. I would remember. We would be better.

It was when we reached the Colosseum that we finally gathered our wits and selves again. The old structure, though broken and torn down, loomed over us like a forgotten fortress. The south side of the large building had been torn down by an earthquake, the same that had devastated parts of the outer districts as well. We stood by the _coxa Colisei_ , the thigh of the Colosseum, now no more than a travertine quarry. I felt dwarfed by this ancient shadow of times gone by. I longed to see it up close, walk through those narrow corridors and stand on the streets within, but Aurelio called me back.

A strange tension had settled on our band of five. Some had parted ways earlier to run errands for Lucio and Allesandra. Then it hadn’t seemed a strange thing, but now their absence seemed like a hole in the picture. I drew closer to the others again, my heart gripped by the current of wariness that seemed to pass through us all.

 _What is it?_ I sent my mind out to touch theirs, find an answer to my query. Aurelio simply shook his head, just as lost as I was. Fabrizio seemed to have an inkling however. He wordlessly touched Alfredo’s shoulder and gestured to the far light of a crossroad. All eyes moved as one. A ducked creature came hurrying towards us. They moved swiftly and on silent feet, unlike us. A bristling went through our group and someone took me by the arm to pull me away from the front. They were aware of my youth in ways I was not. We heard the approaching heartbeat like a distant drum. The other creature slid from shadow to shadow, face hidden under a hood. Fabrizio, Alfredo and a man called Marcus, formed a hostile union against the stranger. They were no doubt one of our kind. No mortal could move in this manner. I strained to see.

_Danger!_

The warning echoed through our minds like the tolling of a bell. Some of us flinched back, others leaned in and bared their teeth like animals. My heart contracted with a strange mixture of fear and eagerness. Again and again, it came, like the waves rolling to shore: _Danger, danger, danger!_

“Giacomo!” Alfredo snapped suddenly, recognizing the vampire that rushed towards us. And it truly was him, seeming suddenly gaunter, more sharply contoured in the silver moonlight. He pulled down his hood when he reached us. His heart kept thundering even as his feet stopped moving.

“We must all return to the catacombs at once.” He told us, his words clipped with worry. “Lucio wants us all back underground.”

“Why, what happened?” One asked. Another was quick to add: “What danger?” And then the haughty claim, dismissing the question: “Nothing is dangerous to us!” The offended scoffs rose now that they knew who they could address. I was a silent spectator among them, not knowledgeable enough to speak. The elder ones had begun to debate. Giacomo seemed unnerved enough for two and when his eyes fell on me his features twisted into outright contempt. This one would never love me but I would only have to suffer him for a little while.  None of it mattered now.

“No, this isn’t up for discussion. It was a direct order. Lucio said we must go now.” Giacomo’s eyes grew in size as his voice dropped to a whisper. I couldn’t help but listen to the weight of the pause.

“The elder has woken.”

A hush fell over them, reverent and stricken with fear. And then everything seemed to happen at once. A waterfall of questions clamored for answers even as the small pack of us mobilized. _Is he here? Is he in Rome? No, but he is moving south! Will he come? Does he know of us? We don’t know, how would we know? Who saw this? A traveler? Allesandra told us! Move faster, by the devil!_ I was taken by the arm again and pulled along to run. Their fear was alien to me, unsettling and unexplained. I ran with them, silent now, unseen. They showed me at once how to move at high speeds without attracting more attention than a passing shadow. After vaulting countless walls and rushing through open windows, we reached a heap of rubble, the ruins of a broken aqueduct. Alfredo pushed a block of stone aside to reveal an opening in the ground and at once we were made to climb down into the darkness.

“Master!” Alfredo’s voice rang out with his northern accent dragging the syllables. We came pouring into the great hall, searching for the one to flock to. I was still awash in confusion, no one would answer my questions. I wanted to know what manner of creature could terrify them so, make them run home like scolded children. I thought of the figures I had encountered in my reading.

Lucio was waiting for us, sunken in his throne. He seemed even smaller now, as if a great weight was resting on him. Alfredo came rushing towards him at once but when Allesandra stepped forward to meet him, he stopped in his tracks.

“Is it true? Have you heard him?” He asked her instead.

The two elders exchanged a glance, a silent communication. Then Allesandra nodded her head and sighed. “He woke in the mountains, after more than one hundred years of slumber. A blood drinker of his age can sleep for centuries only to awaken with new strength. He is moving south. I can hear him. He thinks himself silent but he is not so.”

“And will he come to Rome? Will he seek to destroy us?”

An angry snarl went through the congregation, a whisper of defiance and concern. I shrank from the group and slid closer to the three elders. All of this was new and strange and frightening. But how glad I was to listen, to catch the shimmer of their thoughts as they pondered this possible threat. I understood none of it and so it wasn’t real to me. I couldn’t think of a reason why blood drinkers would harm each other. Weren’t we kin? Brothers and sisters in the dark?

“I do not know. He does not take the direct route to Rome. He might wish to pass us by.” Allesandra sounded absent, as if she was listening to a song that was sung outside her door. Her gaze was turned to the middle distance, not for anyone in the room. She was searching with her mind gift, straining her ability to find this old one again.

“Why would he pass us by? Has he not terrorized this city before?”

“Perhaps it no longer suits him. It barely suits us. It is less than a shadow of its former glory.”

“Your optimism might cost us our lives, Allesandra.”

Lucio finally raised a hand to stop their argument. He seemed embittered and shrewd, nothing like the creature I had left here a few hours before. He finally straightened up in his chair and looked at us all with dull eyes. “There is a reason I wanted you to return. These next nights we must keep hidden from sight. Rome is ours but do not think there are no eyes on us. We will not go out to hunt in a large congregation. Not until it is clear where the pagan means to go.”

A discontented silence met the coven master’s words but for once I saw some real authority in Lucio’s demeanor. He sat straighter, his features harder and grimmer than before. He had less of a confused old man and more of a seasoned veteran. When I looked around I realized that I was not the only clueless one. The younger ones were just as lost as me, and those who knew who this creature was seemed restless with nerves. But it pricked me, the word ‘pagan’. Were my tentative guesses pointing me to the truth of the matter? There had never been any word of the old pagans’ demise…

“What one blood drinker could possibly destroy all of us?” I finally raised my voice, each word pushed out by the pounding of my heart in my throat. I closed my mind as best I could so no one else might know what I feared. “Allesandra, Lucio. You are both strong enough to lead us. You are older than all of us. You are wiser, too. So why would one stranger be a threat to us? Why would he seek to harm us?”

It felt good to finally speak my confusion out loud but the glances I was given for it took some of my zeal out of me again. Lucio shook his head, almost too subtly to notice. Allesandra must have seen it if even I caught the gesture, but she didn’t heed his silent command. She looked upon me with her large sad eyes and said: “We are speaking of a Child of the Millennia, young one. An ancient blood drinker who was already old when I had just been born. And are we not devils? We all seek to destroy one another. He is stronger than us and we must pay our respects.”

Lucio’s fist came down on the end of his armrest. “Enough! Allesandra, foolish woman, you would speak your mind to anyone who cares to listen.”

“You would not recognize greatness and if it stood right in front of you.” She replied calmly, undisturbed by Lucio’s outburst. With the way they quarreled, I wondered if they were lovers. It seemed unlikely. She moved now, out of the shadows, and towards me. Others retreated where she set foot, making way for her as if she was the queen of the land, something too important to come in contact with common men. But who of us was truly common?

“You read so very many things, my young one.” She said to me. I could feel the way her mind melted into mine. It was an intrusion, not as forceful as Lucio or Alfredo’s but still uncomfortable. I felt vulnerable and found out. Allesandra continued: “Too many things for a mind untrained in the critic’s gaze. You need not believe all you read. The written word will betray you. Have you ever met a pagan?”

I shook my head. No, of course I hadn’t. I had met men who did not fear God though they called themselves Christians. I had met sinners, too. But a pagan? They were idolaters, villainous figures from the verses of the Holy Book and they all were met with pure destruction and heavenly wrath. I considered them something ancient, something foreign and frightening, something beastly, more animal than man. There were missionaries, I knew, who bravely traveled to the wild lands to save these savages and bring them to the Lord. I didn’t know if they ever returned victorious.

“Our Alfredo here used to be one such savage.” She smiled wryly, as if she had caught me in a lie. My head turned in surprise and so did his, blond brows pressing down to narrow his gaze. A flash of shame darkened his pale skin as I stared in disbelief.

“He is from the north and he used to believe the stories his elders told by the fires. He believed in many gods, gods of war and gods of spring, and in giants as well. In giants and dwarfs and strange folk in the woods.” She went on as if to embarrass him further with the absurdity of it. I tried not to smile for fear of insulting him. Alfredo ground his teeth anyway, holding his tongue only because he preferred to keep it.

“But Alfredo has learned. Alfredo has renounced his false beliefs and stopped praying to the wind and the trees. He has found his place among us and accepted our Lord Satan as his master. So you see that pagans are not so different from us. They can learn, as you learned. And this one we speak of is a great and powerful blood drinker. His age alone makes him a legend. Not a savage but a scholar.”

Lucio’s eyes were drilling into me again and I wanted to flinch from them, escape their prodding. But I couldn’t keep my gaze off Allesandra who spoke as if she was reciting poetry, her slim form moving unseen under the heavy blanket of her robes. The entire coven was watching her, transfixed and paralyze at the same time. This creature she talked of so intimately was supposed to destroy us? I couldn’t quite believe it, and if only for the lack of structure to the story. I had just found these strange blood drinkers, just had been accepted among them, in their ranks, and now it was supposed to be over? I wouldn’t accept that. My story was supposed to look up now, turn around. The worst was behind me. I remembered it. I had lived it and I had died. The man I once was had been starved out, eaten alive by the Black Death, and left to rot in the house his hands had built. And I, this blood drinker I was, had crawled from the wreckage, the corpses of my family gathered around me like the Virgin’s birthing thighs. So why would it end now? I was so young.

“Is he one of those I read about? Allesandra, is he one of them?” I demanded to know, though my words were strangely soft, almost hopeful. There was an underlying authority in my voice, as if I had a right to this knowledge and merely asked to be given the key to it that she was keeping for me. I noticed it as well as anyone else.

This time she hesitated and I saw the reason for it. Behind me, the black congregation rustled and shivered. They did not know half of what I had learned and it was supposed to stay that way. I thought of the priest in the town I had once lived in. I thought of the way he would smile, paternal and patronizing, down on us who could not read what he recited from the Scripture. I wanted to read the Bible. I glanced at the others, the flock of the ignorant.

Lucio scoffed from his seat. “I see how it is. The pupil decides when a lesson shall commence. Well, Allesandra. He is yours far more so than mine, for now. You tell him then. Tell him of your precious Noble Savage.” He croaked in disdain. “The others with me. Those of us who do not give themselves to distraction so easily have a ritual to prepare.”

“Ritual?” I echoed, turning my head, as Allesandra’s hand came to rest on my back and gently steer me away from the rest of the coven.

“You’ll break your neck if you turn it so fast.” Lucio refused my question with a wave of his hand. My brothers and sisters moved away from me, shrugging and muttering though no longer with that sense of envy about them when they looked at me. But they did look and there I found my answer. When one of them met my eye, at once their mind poured into mine like water through an open floodgate. I stood, shocked, when the answers rushed to meet my questions.

They had rituals here, specific deeds and services to be done for the glory of Satan. They would light a great fire, they would draw the sigils with the blood from their own veins and the ashes of the burned. They would sing the old hymns that all others had forgotten, and they would bring the devil the flesh he so desired. The pale young body would be offered to the devouring beast and the blood would flow like it had flown in the rivers of Egypt. Body and Blood, spilled across the altar. My heart started quaking suddenly at the gore to their spirituality, their disrespect. They would sacrifice a virgin soul to Satan, tear it apart like the hounds of hell. _Not they_ , whispered her soft singing voice in my head as she peered at me, _We_. _We will do these things._

Again, that hymn came to me. I thought of it, I gave it to her. My very mind was humming the terrifying melody and hers, hers answered in tune. She left with the words ringing in her ears. She carried them for me as I was taken from their midst. What a trembling there was to come...

I walked in silence next to Allesandra who could not pretend she hadn’t witnessed the silent exchange of horrors.

“You have all the intellect but none of the wisdom.” The coven mistress said to me, sweetly. “This is the way we devote ourselves. The zeal of it should become you. You must never balk at the payment our Lord will have of us. We kill for him every night and we are rewarded with pleasure for our dark deeds. You want to be the monster you were made to be but you do not want to undergo the transformation. Forget your mortal piety, my child. God is gone from your mind but not your heart. Forget, and practice what you preach.”

Her reproach was delivered with such motherly care, such melodious disappointment, that I had nothing to say in my defense. I lowered my eyes to think on my hypocrisy.

“You will see.” Allesandra opened a heavy iron door for me, one handed where I would surely have needed two. I stepped forward, suddenly aware that these were her private chambers and that she would have no one tell her to bed down with our brothers in the faith. This was not to say that she had any sense of luxury to her. Her chamber was chastely furnished. She merely kept a small chest in the corner of her cell, and a stool in the other. The largest part of it was taken up by a great sarcophagus, all ornaments broken off and worn down until there was nothing left to it but naked stone; her resting place.

“Will you tell me of this blood drinker now?” I asked, trying not to seem impatient for fear of losing her favor. "Why are the others left to be clueless? To what end? Why do we fear this creature? Is he truly so much stronger than all of us? How can this be? How did he come into this world that he would hunt us? What does he want from us?"

“Marius.”

“What?”

“That is his name, child. His name is Marius.” Allesandra smiled at me as she made to stand by her sarcophagus, long-fingered hands elegantly folded before her body. I stood in the doorway still and finally made to slowly enter the room. _Marius_. The name chimed in my head like a bell. It sounded like a name the ancient gods would bear. By the way my brothers had run from the mere shadow of his rising form, I could only assume that he was no less. I thought of the pagans they had told me about, the ones that had slaughtered those had come before us. He seemed like a monster, risen from the deep, to continue his gruesome work. And yet Allesandra called him a scholar?

“Tell me of Marius, Allesandra.”


	5. Chapter 5

I sat in silent contemplation. My legs were folded beneath my body so that my knees could serve to prop up my elbows. My eyes were trained on the intricate patterns of wear on the sarcophagus before me. I could guess at the shape of faces and curling vines, fruits as well, that once decorated the great stone coffin. They had long been broken off, perhaps with bare hands. As I sat, I knew that Allesandra was watching me. She had finished her speech a while ago and been silent ever since. I had heard every word and now they all were whirring around in my head like a swarm of insects. I felt as if I had stumbled upon a hidden foreign land, with strange customs and stranger tales. The way demons and devils marched along the edges of the mortal horizons, only ever touched on in hearsay and whispered bedtime stories, so the devils had their own cast of growing shadows to shrink from, a tapestry of legends. One such legend was the vampire Marius.

His age alone had ushered him into the ranks of myth for there was no one alive who could speak of a time when there had not been a Marius. But this Marius lived alone, far away from others, and had no love for those who came near him. A lone wolf, hostile to all that entered his territory, and yet the keeper of vast knowledge. He hailed from a time of gods and mystical beasts, forgotten now, and was perhaps the last who remembered what the great ruins we marveled at stood for. No one had seen the turn of more centuries than him. No one knew how old he truly was. To the members of the coven here in Rome, he was a phantom and an aberrant, something to wonder about and to fear should it come too close. In my mind he became larger than life. I never once tried to give him a face or a voice, but I imagined him powerful and terrible and wise. I imagined an old god on his throne, as likely to kill you as to give you his favor. But he was no god, no ravaging spirit. He was a blood drinker as I was a blood drinker. I couldn’t imagine that he was truly so hateful towards his own kind. Who did he have but us to share his fate?

“Mortals, my child.” Allesandra interrupted my brooding with soft words. “He keeps about him a gaggle of mortals wherever he settles. He opens his house to vagabonds and artists and drunkards. And when they leave they carry the stories of the great and wealthy Marius on their tongues. He buys their love and friendship with coins and flattery and spells.”

I looked back at her in confusion and surprise. She read the thoughts in my mind as I read the thoughts of others, of course, but with such grace. I only wondered why hers were closed to me. This was a question for another time, however. I turned to face her fully and said: “But why would he contend with mortals? Why would he show such weakness for them? They surely cannot offer him companionship, or understanding, or purpose. If he is as wise and old as you say, then he must have some truth he keeps to himself. How else can he live at all?”

“Don’t lose yourself too much in him. He is seductive in his secrecy but all he might guard from us are more riddles.” Allesandra’s smile was placid and dreamy, as if all this was no more than a fairytale she had once heard. I wish I knew what she was thinking, if she was thinking anything at all. Perhaps she had already thought everything she might ever think and now was left with paling echoes. After all, I reasoned, she was old as well.

“And you?” I asked her.

“Me?”

“Yes. What secrets do you know that you have lived to grow so pale and other?”

As soon as I spoke the words, I regretted them. Neve had I seen such a reproached expression on a face as perfect as hers. Her deep eyes filled with sorrow. She seemed so broken and small suddenly that I wanted to take her into my arms and hold her. Embarrassed by this reaction, she put on a brave smile as if to ward me off in case I would go through with my desire. She left her stool and instead sat down on the ground with me. Her robes shifted aside when she drew her knees to her body, revealing a white moth-eaten dress that splayed around her legs like wisps of mist. She was like a wraith, a specter you would glimpse in the windows of abandoned fortresses where she would lament some long-forgotten tragedy. I shifted back from her, keenly aware of the strength she harbored in her lithe form and twig-thin limbs. I had marveled at Marius when I should have spent the time marveling at Allesandra, who was closer to me and shared my understanding of the world.

“How old are you?” I asked her softly, thinking that perhaps I could understand one better through the other. “How have you come to be in this place?”

Then Allesandra did something highly unusual. She gathered her hair over one shoulder and stroked the silver tangles as if she were a young girl in front of a mirror. It was the gesture of a young girl, coy and yet so aware of the beauty she possessed, that possessed her. A shower of dust rippled from her hair and into her lap. “My dear, my good and zealous child,” She sighed, almost as if she meant to sing me to sleep. I knew she could have, with a voice as lovely as hers. “With all your questions, and all your desire for knowledge, have you ever wondered why we have none?”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t.” She smiled her brave smile again, but now it seemed almost pitiful. “I ask you now: Has anyone asked your name?”

I was dumbfounded. It must have looked almost comical, how I stared at her with big eyes, brows raised to perfect arches, lips slightly agape. She was right. Not once had anyone asked what to call me. I was called ‘brother’ and ‘child’, or the occasional and much dreaded ‘boy’. But no one called me by my name because no one had wanted to know it. Though surely, they knew. Surely they had peered into my mind, dug deep into it and all was divulged to them without my consent. This was what they did, after all. Suddenly I felt a pang of guilt to have kept it to myself.

“My name is—”

“Is it?” She cut me off at the pass. “Have you not refused to acknowledge even the slightest memory of your life before? Have you not denied the very womb from which you were born into God’s earth when you were remade with the Dark Blood? I see your heart and I know how it tries to mourn what you have lost. But you cannot, can you? You have done instinctively what others must be forced to do. You abandoned your mortal history, you gave it to the cleansing flames. The man you were is dead, and his name died with him.”

She spoke so calmly that the alarming content of her words barely touched me. I could only agree with her. That was what I believed. But I didn’t know if I had succeeded. It didn’t feel that way. I was still as helplessly groping in the dark as before. And it made no matter that I understood why I had been put in this purgatory, and what it would demand of me. It didn’t change that I didn’t want to be here. But there was sense to it. Whatever I was now, it should never be allowed to dirty the memories I had of more innocent days. I remembered what my maker had said to me, on that dreadful night: _I made you, I am your mother and your father. You are mine own blood. And no son of mine will weep for dirt._

“So I should not bear a name at all?”

“You will take a new name soon. Think on the monks of Cluny. Think on the saints. They took new names as well. They all shed their earthly shackles to serve the Living Lord. We are the servants of Satan, who will guide us as we live in the shadow of his dark wings.” She looked at me. “Did you feel his presence in you when you drank tonight? Did the blood make your heart beat stronger? Who would it beat for if not the devil? No part of you belongs to yourself, my child, not even your name. Be patient.”

Patience was the last thing I wanted. I had never been good at it. _Restraint_ , I had never been good at. But I remembered how my brothers had gorged themselves on blood and played their games, and how they boasted of shiny trinkets they collected in secret hiding places. That was wrong, had to be. And in my disappointment, I found resolve. The blood was given to us by Satan and we were elected by Satan to serve his foul schemes. Acolytes of evil, the opposing force. The designs dizzied me. There was still so much left to learn to come into my new kind and my new place in the world. Understanding was only the beginning.

Allesandra would not tell me her age, or where she had come from. She wouldn’t mention a word of who she had been before she had become a blood drinker. These things were secret even to herself, it seemed. The past, experienced past which was a different thing then than it is now, began with her arrival in Rome. I understood her in this. It didn’t matter where we had been before we came to Rome. Oh, I still remembered of course. Through the lessons in rhetoric and blood-soaked theology and the endless chants of _forget forget forget_ , I remembered. I recalled the stumbling upwards climb out of a ruin, out of a pile of corpses. I remembered the first blood I had drunken, forced into me from a dirty wrist and how I had clung to it. I knew the winding roads of my country, and the woods through which we had traveled, my maker and I. I knew the horrors of Florence, which had been so ravaged by the plague that the dead were hanging from their open windows. I knew how they rotted in the streets and how the rats, always the rats, crawled inside the bloated bodies to feast and breed and bear their young.

Worse, really, were the memories that told of a time before the blood. I fought those with the viciousness of a wounded animal. Whenever I rose from my death sleep, there seemed this moment of twilight of the mind, and in this nebula I would spy images that burned me like fire. I hurried out of my grave then, back to the horrible present which engulfed me with its stench and evil noise. At times, the memories would grow stronger and I’d see faces. I hated those the most. I saw raven haired girls that had my eyes and young men who smiled the way I could smile. Just as well, I would think, as long as I don’t see the children. The children broke my heart. When these things revealed themselves to me, I became fanatic with zeal. I debated endlessly with Allesandra and Lucio, who had taken me into their midst, about the nature of God and of the devil and the true sacrifice of Christ. I hammered my beliefs into shape, I sculpted them. It was work I could do, and I had nothing else so I was glad to do it. Besides, it was high time to come to terms with what we all stood for.

In the following months there was no news of Marius though we all listened with bated breath. But we heard of different things then. The plague had traveled to Paris and London. We were dimly aware of those rising grey cities at the edge of our world. Hundreds and thousands were dying by the day. There were bands of believers in the streets, flogging themselves. They drew large crowds, and some followed them from town to town in reverent admiration. We heard of some battle or other that didn’t matter to us. It fascinated me all the same, how daily life seemed to just go on regardless. People were dying everywhere and the graveyards were overflowing with naked flesh, but the traders still traded and the writers still wrote and the lords still did battle. I found this especially remarkable. And naïve. Mostly naïve. In their greed and shortsightedness, they were wasting what little time they had left to set things right for themselves. After all, the world was ending.

This was never discussed because it was never disputed. Pestilence had come to wash the world clean. Famine and War were already conducting their merciless reign. And we remembered, of course, the tales of the Danish warriors that had come from the north not too many centuries ago, to destroy monasteries and villages with their great fleets and fast river boats. They were gone now but the piracy went on. And who would forget the people of the east? The Mongols with their horses and bows that ravaged Christian ground. They were sent by God to punish the gluttonous and the vain and the immoral people of our time. We found this very reassuring, to tell the truth. Whenever news reached us of a foreign catastrophe we would nod and mutter among ourselves and find in this terror a certain kinship. After all, we were all parts of the same scourge.

As time went on, a time filled with dust and prayer and every night a few mouthfuls of blood, Lucio grew more displeased with everything. I saw him watching us with hawk’s eyes, fierce and burning with an anger I didn’t understand. We sang our hymns and he muttered. We prayed, and he left the chamber. Whenever I talked to my brothers, tried to console the young ones who were doubting their place in the Lord’s plan, I would eventually turn and sure enough see the coven master standing across the hall, watching. Allesandra would stand by his side, in prayer or simply dreaming, and they both would say nothing.

The only moments Lucio seemed content were the ones during which we failed him. He appointed kills, occasionally, and this was something I abhorred. Especially because of the clear-cut cruelty to his decisions. I knew he set us tasks we balked at, tasks we might not even stomach to fulfill. And if he had been someone else I might have believed that he only meant to push us past our boundaries for the sake of Christ who had suffered as we should suffer. But he was no one but Lucio, a mean muttering creature, and we all knew he did it to taunt us. Aurelio was sent to kill young mothers but leave the babes at their breasts. Fabrizio had to snuff out aspiring artists and musicians. And so forth. When we failed, and we did for one reason or another, Lucio sent Allesandra to us who sweetly and kindly punished us for our weaknesses. She drove all hesitance out of our minds with her hard white hands that could break limbs like branches. Oh, Lucio was happy enough when we screamed.

It was one of those nights when I was given my new name. They had bound me so that I would not struggle and forced the child to my mouth. It was a dreadful thing to see babies die. They would wiggle and cry and then finally lay still and this was horror in its purest form. How often had it stopped my heart when at night the crying would cease? I would wake with a start because the child was silent. A quiet child was a sick child, a quiet child was a dead child. Was it breathing? Did it move? My child—Allesandra placed the small bundle in my lap so that I might look upon it. I couldn’t bear it. I felt hot and cold and ruined. But she kissed my forehead and my hair. She kissed me again and again and pushed the frail dead body against my chest. Her voice was in my head and I knew where she was even as the blood tears would blur my vision. She called to me, called me by a name at last. She called me a saint. The child was dead and she called me a saint.

 _Santino_.

She made me form the word with my own lips, still wet with blood. Was it mockery? It had been mockery from Lucio’s mouth but hers was pressed to mine in love. I said the name. Over and over, like a prayer. And every time I said it, it became truer. I surrendered so easily, so willingly. I wanted to believe that I could have done nothing to prevent it. That this was what was asked of me by God and the devil and that all my suffering had brought me to the precipice of this revelation: I was Santino, the Saint of Evil, and nothing else mattered.

Allesandra stayed with me, never far as she had once promised, and my misery faded to a constant dignified suffering over time. Her love was like a homing beacon to me when I was out there in the winding streets of Rome and threatened to lose myself in the push and pull of the thinning crowd. I felt it even when she admonished me, even when her repetitive words made my ears ring and drove all worldly thoughts out of my mind. She always advised me to forget and to pray. Have faith, that was the imperative. Have faith. This was what she said when after two years, Giacomo went into the fire. What a spectacle it had been. We had sung for him and prayed, and he had said nothing at all. He watched the fire with large wondering eyes, as if he had never seen flames before. There was some talk, that I had cursed him as I had raved against him when I had been starved to madness. Others said I had simply predicted the future, as mystics were wont to do. A vision, a secret. They had all sorts of ideas about it. I didn’t share in them. Giacomo and I knew the truth. He had been carrying the wish for the end with him for longer than he could recall. He wanted the small house in Burgundy, the girl he had loved at night in the field. He couldn’t let go of them and so he must join them. He had been so frightened for so long, but now he was too tired for fear. And so he embraced us all, kissed our cheeks, and let Lucio mutter some parting prayer to him. He was impatient to be gone. The drums were still beating when all that remained of Giacomo was ashes. He had been a blaze of light and heat and we had raised our arms and cried out for joy. The devil had claimed him.

These and many other things happened in the first years of my immortal life. Believers came and went. Rome waxed and waned. Again and again I returned to the cell where they made me read histories, bibles and reflections. In the end, it all amounted to the same: We had no history of our own but were mortals turned demon, simply to torment the living and feast on their misery.  And this I could attest to myself. As the years went by, I felt my own strength growing. I was perfected in my murderous trade. Feats that had exhausted me when I had been a newly made creature, now merely cost me a moment’s time. My strides were longer, carried me faster. I could scale buildings in the blink of an eye and even as the hunger plagued me, I was able to withstand it for nights at a time without losing my wits and reason. What was more remarkable even that that: My sense for other people’s minds became stronger than I had ever thought it would. It seemed to exist quite independently from me finally. An endless clamor roared around me at all times and I had to force the voices out of my head to get some peace. And with time more voices joined in. When I reached my thirtieth year in the Blood, I could easily dismantle Lucio’s defenses and even Allesandra’s mind was not closed to me anymore. More and more secrets seemed to reveal themselves to me and I could not help but remember what she had once said to me: Be patient and have faith. What had seemed an empty phrase back then had become fundamental.

“Santino, my love, may I speak with you?” Allesandra’s soft voice called to me from the shadows. It was the year 1381 and the night was thick with the stench of summer. She had been watching me for a while now, keeping her mind firmly shut against me for no reprimand could keep my instinctive intrusions at bay. She kept her thoughts behind the massive image of a locked door. Visualization, she used to say, was an inelegant but effective method. I stopped on the street that was leading me towards he Vatican, the place we could never go for fear of death. I had had no luck tonight. Every victim I had chosen had worn a crucifix around their neck, or else entered hallowed ground before I could get to them. Such a simple thing to do, it was enough to ward us off. I didn’t care to be considered an idle servant and was in a hurry to complete my mission before dawn. But for Allesandra, I stopped.

“You have been silent for weeks, and now you mean to speak with me.” I remarked as she joined me on the street. We were two glaring white faces in the shroud of darkness. Anyone could see we were not of the mortal realm. That was, if there had been anyone to see us. “Walk with me. I have no time to lose. What is troubling you, my lady?”

“Duty, not hunger, moves you. You give me such joy, my child.” She sighed as she fell in step with me. “But my trouble may be your luck. Santino, what do you mean to do with the life that the Lord Satan has granted you?”

“I mean to serve him well until he has no further use of me.” I answered at once, and with a measure of confusion. Why would she debate purpose with me now? I was fulfilling mine, or trying to. Was there no lone wanderer left on these streets? Would I have to break into a home and slay my victim in their bed?

“Yes, and you are so diligent. But do you not think that there are better ways to serve him?” She pressed. “Among us are only a select few who have the understanding, the strength, to become the true instruments of the Devil.”

Finally, she tore my thoughts away from the blood that awaited me. I looked at her in wonder and our pace slowed down. Wordlessly, I waited for her to continue. She knew what questions I meant to pose and surely, she would answer them in time.

“Those that are like me, we can only serve under the wise guidance of our superiors. We are the monks and nuns that heed the abbot’s words. We follow in the footsteps of the truly great minds, those who carry in their own spirit the reflection of Satanical purity. We are the defenders of truth, but there must be those that speak it first. It is time you answer your true call.”

A dreadful suspense came over me when she said those words. Without meaning to, I glanced at her, met her eyes. And in my gaze she could read that I knew what she meant to say. Still she said it.

“Santino, I want you to lead this coven.” She gestured for me to keep my answer to myself for another moment. “From the night you came into our halls, Lucio and I knew that you would one day rise above the ranks of the followers. You are destined for this greatness. And you know this, do you not?”

How could I not know it? In every way they had told me this. They had instructed me before anyone else. They had given me knowledge, books, the words of those that came before me. Allesandra’s whispered words were always in my ear, calling me her saint, calling me special, so special, chosen and ordained. I had been given the visions. I could see my brothers’ hearts like coins glimmering at the bottom of a dark well. I was the sufferer, the bearer of purpose. I was fully and truly a child of the Evil One himself. I served him better than anyone else. I knew right from wrong even in our twisted morality. And there it came again; this swell of pride that ignited my chest and clouded my eyes. When I had left the cell all those years ago and felt it dizzying me, I had thought it was no more than a stroke of madness. Now it felt like a premonition.

“Am I not too young?” I argued, though it seemed only a matter of formality. She had made up her mind on this decades ago.

“Do you think you are?” She threw the question back at me. Of course we were in agreement. No, I was not young at all. I had abandoned age as she had abandoned age. And the sooner I began my servitude the better. Already the mere idea of it sparked all kinds of notions in me, ways to perfect our congregation, make it pleasing to God in its strictly conducted evil. Every little failing I had noticed could finally be remedied. How easy to imagine…

Still I shook my head, “Lucio will not die for many years. Why are we speaking of this now?”

“He has no taste for the coven anymore.” The sadness in her voice tugged at my heart. It was the kind of tone she had that made me want to wrap her up in my cloak and hold her tight until all sadness had gone from her. Loving, violent thing that she was. She continued: “I watch his dreams when he sleeps and they are dreams of madness. No one can serve forever. He is nearly four hundred years old now and his star is setting. Setting, so yours may rise.”

“In his thoughts I saw no trace of madness.” I was unnerved by this, by the idea that something so essential could slip my attention completely. I was young and blissfully ignorant of the power that I lacked. I thought myself completed. 

“He doesn’t know of it yet, but I know. I always know such things. And it is his time. Why should we allow him to uselessly cling to an empty life when Satan is calling for him?” Allesandra had taken charge of the directions and suddenly I found that she had led me away from St. Peter’s square and back into the winding guts of the town. She led him past old fountains and deserted palazzos, faded echoes of times of splendor that perhaps were never more than stories. If anyone remembered Rome as the great and powerful city it had once been, then no one was speaking of it.

“You are talking as if we should speed his departure along.” I replied, quite appalled by the thought.

“I am talking as if we should not prolong it. He has no patience for the young ones anymore and the faithful embitter him. He should go now before his doubts spread and poison everyone else.”

“So even those of our ilk are subject to the senility of age.”

“The mind ages even if the body does not. It is our lot to wander the earth, damned to live unchanged in this purgatory of death and dying, but we are not chained to it indefinitely. Eventually the sentence will have been served and the convict released to the judgement of God. Only the truly doomed will live to count millennia, with no hope of redemption. Nothing should suffer to last forever.”

Ah, those silent pagan gods that wandered the earth, steeped in sin. I remembered the tales Allesandra had spun for me of the great Roman scholar, Marius. I wondered if he knew of his damnation. The torment had to be indescribable. Anyone of such an age must have seen more than the soul could bear. Would it not be a relief to abandon the flesh and descend finally into hell where there was nothing but the fiery pit to possess us?

My thoughts returned to Allesandra, and once more I found myself wondering how old she was. I didn’t speak but she knew what was on my mind. She finally dismissed me with a soft kiss to my cheek and sent me on my way. She had led me to a merchant’s house. I could hear the slumbering mortals inside, and in the chamber beneath the roof, there slept a young woman so beautiful she could have had her pick of men as she pleased, barely sixteen years old. With this vision before me, the innocent beauty in her bed, brown hair surrounding her fair smooth face like a halo, Allesandra left me to my duty.


	6. Chapter 6

 

So it came to pass that we congregated for the old ritual one night. In a wide circle we stood around the fire that leapt up into the high dome of the hall, filling it with ugly smoke. Allesandra shed a tear as Lucio walked towards the center of the room, towards the pyre we had made him built. In his confusion he had not resisted or asked us for the reason. Perhaps he had been waiting for it as well. His moods had grown utterly volatile by the end. No longer would he speak to anyone but Allesandra, though sometimes he listened to me when I spoke to him. He said little and when he did it was a language I had never heard before, something old and foreign though not entirely unfamiliar. Allesandra told me then, that it was the language of the Lombards who had once conquered these lands, many centuries ago. He laughed often, and it was a cackling private sort of laughter that let us know we were the objects of his ridicule. This was new to all of us, for we all were younger than Lucio and had never seen one so old lose his mind. The Devil was calling him piece by piece, first his wits then his body. But what should have been cause for celebration only fueled the discontent among us. Many came to resent him in his final moments of madness when he, instead of killing his ritual victim for the sacrifice simply mutilated them, cutting deep into the stomach and the chest ‘in search for the soul’. In that moment I had wished to know what was going on in the corrupted head of my leader. But I couldn’t grasp a single thought before it scattered like mist on water.

There was no great affair to it. Two of my brethren beat the drums while we sang a parting hymn to honor our Lord and the perfect malevolent design in which we had been conceived. And Allesandra, her head lowered in reverence, took Lucio by the hand as tenderly as a mother would, and led him towards the flame. She stood to his side and urged him on even as his eyes brightened with the realization of his fate, or perhaps it was only the fire reflecting in his eyes. Finally he shrugged off his master’s robes so that he only wore his long white undergarments as he leapt onto his pyre.

A great sense of unease had gathered in my chest as I watched him approach the flames and now it broke lose. As the body of the former coven master twisted and danced in the flames, a low gasp escaped me. It was too much the mirror image of my maker in the fire. I watched Lucio shrivel up and blacken and before my inner eye it was Unulf again, crying out as if in hysterics. It was a small blessing that Lucio remained entirely silent as he died.

I suppose I must have felt something akin to grief as I watched him depart. In the last years I had spoken often with Lucio in private. He had instructed me in secret and occult matters, had told me of the oldest rituals and traditions. I had learned from him the hidden knowledge of all things infernal. I knew how to call upon an evil spirit though I would never dare try to conjure one, and I knew the sigils of the witches and demons. He had taken me to see a possessed child. We had watched her roar and writhe beneath the cross above the bed she had been tied to. She died no week later, strangled to death by the exorcist. We had shared these countless moments and now I felt strangely abandoned with them.

The rest of us stood by, some of us with grim satisfaction, others with a look of pure horror on their faces, as our former master was reduced to ashes. He had burned incredibly bright, as if the fire had gone inside of him and lit him up from within. Nothing remained. Afterwards it was Allesandra again who gathered the ashes in a small urn and handed it to Alfredo and me.

“Scatter the ashes.” She implored us. “You must always scatter the ashes, or else their spirits will cling to their ruined forms and try to return.”

So we took the urn and carried it out of the catacombs and into the world of the living. Alfredo joked that we ought to dump the contents in a basin of holy water, see if they catch fire anew. The death hadn’t touched him. He seemed to have quite enjoyed it. I hadn’t liked Lucio either, but such a disrespectful display of pleasure unsettled me. It hinted as something foul within the heart. We strew the ashes onto a field, feeling much like the soldiers of old as they had salted the fields of their enemies.

“A bad way,” Alfredo muttered as we went on our way back to our coven. Now that the deed was done he had lost his humor. In fact, he seemed uncharacteristically somber. “A bad way to get rid of them. You think the devil will find him like this? As dust in a field? No. We should have given him to the ravens.”

“Ravens? What are you talking about?”

Alfredo only grunted and made a dismissive hand gesture. There was a beat of silence before he continued: “Allesandra wants you on that throne next, no?”

I paused, uncertain. Would he lash out in jealousy? Did he want that place for himself? I didn’t trust Alfredo with nobler intentions than these. He didn’t seem accustomed to them. And it rankled me that I could not get into his mind, not truly. Whenever I saw glimpses of it, it was if through a wall of thick fog. I only caught silhouettes. Something about him was entirely alien to me, and it was more than his foreign tongue and strange beliefs. Sometimes he would fall back in an odd fashion, almost limping, and at others the flickering of a candle transfixed him with unbridled terror. Some said he could see the future. I thought he was merely strange.

The Norseman noticed my hesitance and barked a rough laugh in response. “Skittish as a filly. You have a long way to go. Now listen to me. Listen. She will make you the master. And she might as well. It is nothing to me. Preside over your rituals, play the lord of graveyards. You with your clever words and holy visions. I will heed your words and obey your commands, if only you promise me something in return.” Then he looked at me and his pale eyes had never seemed more earnest than now. He was a tall creature, his hair and beard so blonde they seemed almost white. I looked him over, thought on our time together, and tried to find in me a trace of fondness for him. I came up empty. Alfredo surely knew this, but the matter was important enough for him to rely on me all the same. So I let him speak. He grasped my hand then, and I thought I heard his skin crack.

“Promise me that when I must die, you will not let me burn.”

***

I will not bore you with internal affairs. As well you know, I was made the leader of the Roman Coven in that time and Allesandra remained beside me as my closest advisor. When I took the master’s robes, no one opposed me. I donned the garb and swore to dedicate my life to the coven and our Lord Satan, to be his instrument and lead my flock in accordance with the laws of God, laws made not for but against us. I remember the night clearly. Many fires were lit, out in an open field, until the fumes had gone to our heads and we shouted and howled at the stars in revelry. We sang and danced, and I was brought from one embrace to another, kissed tenderly by each of my brothers and sisters. Not a heart among them that wasn’t ready to accept my leadership. I could tell. I could see it clear as the embers in the fires. Time had forged bonds between us all and I was loved. I thought it was love. 

It did something to me, to have the weight of all my brethren’s lives and souls rest on my shoulders. Something was kicked into motion, a mechanism that quietly whirred in the background. I did not only wish to serve, I wished to excel. I made a list in my mind of all the failings I had noticed in my years under Lucio’s thumb and at once sought to remedy them. We had been a roving band of dogs in the streets of Rome. We had been disorderly and easily corrupted by vices. No wonder they thought themselves destined for Hell. They had never tried to earn admittance to Heaven. Where was it written that we were servants without reward? The devil commanded us as well he should for we were of his wretched dominion, but finally it was the glory of God we served. I cannot describe to you the ferocity with which my ailing mind clung to these thoughts. I needed them as I needed the blood that filled my mouth each night. I was not abandoned, that was my creed. Damned, yes, but not abandoned.

I let Allesandra recite the old commandments of our kind to me until I had them memorized and then I made changes to them according to our needs. The world was not so black and white anymore and we needed to reflect these changes in our beliefs. I would not have my coven sink in a morass of outdated traditionalism. But at the same time, I issued many new rules, strict laws that under penalty of death none of my new children should break.

Since we were not allowed to write these things down, I added them to our nightly prayers. Repetition, I knew, would ingrain these values in their minds and hearts. The laws were footed in common sense more so than religion, but they were the conditions we needed to adhere to if we wanted to live in this world. Fiends that we were, we needed guidelines for the simplest acts of decency.

The laws were as follows:

One –That each coven must have its leader and only he might order the working of the blood magic on a mortal, seeing that the methods and rituals were properly observed.  
Two –That this old curse must never be bestowed upon the crippled, the maimed, or children, or upon those who cannot, even with these dark powers, survive on their own. Be it further understood that all mortals who would receive this curse should be beautiful in person so that the insult to God might be greater when the magic is done.  
Three –That never should an old vampire work this magic lest the blood of the fledgling be too strong. For all our gifts increase naturally with age, and the old ones have too much strength to pass on. Injury, burning –these catastrophes, if they do not destroy the Child of Satan, will only increase his powers when he is healed. Yet Satan guards the flock from the powers of the old ones for almost all, without exception, go mad.  
Four –That no vampire may ever destroy another vampire, except that the coven master has the power of life and death over all his flock. And it is, further, his obligation to lead the old ones and the mad ones into the fire when they can no longer serve Satan as they should. It is his obligation to destroy all vampires who were not properly made. It is his obligation to destroy those that are so badly wounded that they cannot survive on their own. And it is his obligation finally to seek the destruction of all outcasts and all who have broken the laws.

Finally, upon revision, I found myself not quite satisfied. I thought of the cell that harbored all knowledge we possessed of old legends, a cell that could easily be broken into. Why then was this written down if all else could only be spoken? I looked upon the works that had been my trusted companions in the time of greatest agony, locked away behind bars. It was not safe to have this knowledge lying here when it was only meant for the coven master’s eyes.

This thought sparked the first great evil in me, I believe. An evil which was not based on cruelty or violence, but simple desire for control. And I knew that if I wanted to control this coven, control it and make it greater than it was, make it be what I had envisioned, then I would need to control this knowledge as well. I could not let these myths run rampant, allow them to spread with a life of their own. Lucio had been a fool to give this knowledge to me who had made so much more sense of it than he ever could. Safety had its price. The next night I put the writings to the torch and added a new verse to our laws:

Five –That no vampire shall ever reveal his true nature to a mortal and allow that mortal to live. No vampire must ever reveal the history of vampires to a mortal and allow that mortal to live. No vampire must ever commit to writing the history of the vampires or any true knowledge of vampires lest such a history be found by mortals and believed. And a vampire’s name must never be known to mortals, save from his tombstone, and never must a vampire reveal to mortals the location of his or any other vampire’s lair.

I forbade my flock to kill only those they found attractive. No longer would they make a spectacle of their murders. Silent killers, that was what we needed to be. Like disease, like nightly chill, we would slip into the homes of the mortals and kill them in their beds if needs be. I forbade them to pass judgement of any kind, even though this proved a feat even I could not always complete. No personal belongings ought to enrich our nights. We should never look upon paintings or listen to worldly music. We should take no more pleasure in our killing than our nature dictated and when a new fledgling was to be created, it was only from the ranks of the sinners that we should choose. And so forth.

Many were unhappy about the new restrictions and brought their complaints to me nightly. And I, still uncomfortable the seat left to me by Lucio, answered them harshly. We served not for our own personal gain but to perfect a design created by God Himself. I couldn’t understand how they would not see the sense of it. I figured it was idleness that tempted them. But they would not fail me, for they knew that in me satanic perfection was achieved and that I only sought to lift them up, inspire them. And I could be awfully inspiring.

Under my leadership, the coven expanded. We gathered the Children of Darkness into covens with structure and order where they had been roaming strays before, snarling and snapping at each other like feral dogs. We showed them unity, we showed them belonging and purpose. Many came willingly, more than you might believe, for so many young ones were lost and abandoned by their makers and had nowhere to turn but to us. Those that didn’t, those that were old and set in their ways and otherwise opposed us, were driven out, or killed. In the early years I went with my children to these missionary expeditions. I saw Barcelona, where we put an entire band of outcasts to the torch, save for one who agreed to join our ranks. There I left my dear Fabrizio behind who was to be the first coven master of the Barcelonan catacombs. I also saw Cologne and the recently renamed city of Sofia. I sent my most trusted followers farther yet, to London and Paris. They ruled in my stead in those foreign places, for I could not abandon my post. Like the monasteries we organized ourselves, allowing for a clear hierarchy between the outposts and the coven’s seat in Rome. They sent their emissaries to me and I sent them back with instructions. In those days the loyalty of my followers was undisputed and few ever went astray. After all, where could they have gone? We were slowly but surely conquering the continent in this unwritten crusade.

And wherever I went, whoever sent me word of success or failure, there always was at least one vampire I heard of who would speak of the ancient ones. I found this a most marvelous development despite how Allesandra disapproved of my fascination. She would rather I focus on my duties, my service. Of course she was right to chasten me for it, but her warning words could not quell my curiosity. Often I would humor reports of sightings and rumors. This was when a name returned to me which I had all but forgotten in my zeal.

“They say he watched the tower of Pharos fall into the sea. He was there when it crumbled.” The woman before me insisted, her dark eyes flitting around uncertainly. She could hear the shuffling of the rats in the dark. I watched her, though skeptically.

“That happened half a century ago. What use is this talk?” I wanted to know.

“Who knows? Everyone has heard of Marius, but who has ever seen him? One can only follow in his tracks. He was in Alexandria.”

“Or so you have heard.”

“…Yes.”

I tapped the point of my fingernail on the armrest of my seat. As I pondered the value of this rumor, I focused my powers on a singular rat that sat not too far from the restless vampire. I gave its mind a little nudge and sent it scurrying over her feet. She flinched in surprise and then looked back at me. As she did, I reached out a hand to the small animal and let it climb up my arm and onto my shoulder. Rats did not disgust me as they had when I had been a mortal man. I disliked the idea of them, the symbol, but not the animals themselves. Their company was invaluable to me, now that I was so removed from the intimacy of my brethren by the power I wielded. And rats gave me a unique sense of comfort. We were of the same ilk, weren’t we? Vermin of the earth, heralds of decay. I had grown fond of them, kept them close. It calmed me at times to stroke their fur with my fingertips. And they let me do this, of course, because I kept their tiny minds in a firm grip. I had already learned that this power of mine didn’t only apply to rodents.

“Can you tell me anything about him? This traveler you met, what was her name? Zenobia? Did she say anything else? There are few secrets I do not know, and he is one of them. You can imagine my vexation.” I treated her to a crooked little smile, a conspiring glance. We were on the same side in this. “Is he still the pagan sorcerer I know him as? Or does he serve the Devil as is his duty?”

“I don’t know.” She admitted. I didn’t need to dig into her mind to know it was the truth. Nobody ever knew anything about the ancient vampire, Marius. “But I cannot imagine that he does. He is a Child of the Millennia, isn’t he? A legend! They are not servants. They are _gods_.”

I shook my head, though gently, at her words. “No, they are blood drinkers as you and me. The only mystery they keep for their own is how they are able to withstand our Lord Satan’s calling when they become so old and powerful. It is an iniquity that they should not do the Devil’s work despite how they have been fitted for it.”

“They could be spared for a greater purpose… perhaps?” She ventured. I was glad to see that she had come to feel more at ease. I harbored no ill will against her. She had come all the way from Spain where we had made a home of Barcelona’s catacombs a few decades ago. She was a child of Fabrizio, a murderess that had poisoned an unfaithful paramour. Her words were beautifully colored by her Spanish accent. And she had a point. Often I mulled over the possibilities that would open for us if an ancient one were to join our ranks. There could be nothing greater, nothing more solid as proof for our divine purpose on earth than the presence of one of those silent wanderers among us. All would flock to him, like moths to a flame. We would all be together then, united under this dark banner.

“Perhaps,” I allowed. “Thank you, Ramona. Join us for the singing of the hymns and the hunt. Your report has pleased me. Before you return to your master, let me speak with you again so that I may give you a message for my beloved Fabrizio.” Already I could hear the old hymn, softly hummed in the crypts beneath us. Absentmindedly I mouthed the familiar harrowing words: _Dies irae, dies illa…_

It was later that night when Allesandra joined me after the parting prayer that resigned all vampires of my coven to their rest, that I spoke to her of my designs: “But think on it. Who better to lead us, to raise us up from these primitive confines?”

“Santino, you know what I think about this. Marius cannot teach you anything. He could not lead us to greatness like you have done. And the work is far from done. You give yourself to fancies too eagerly.” She spoke with her eyes lowered, watching her hands as she folded them in her lap. She didn’t think I was taking well to the new freedoms I had come into, and subjected her to. I was now free to wander where I pleased, answer to no one but the Devil himself and had no need to explain myself. Not too long ago I had gone into the city of Rome and brought her a dress she could wear now that her old robes were all but falling apart. She had not received it well, but I had not allowed her to object. I believed she still held it against me. She considered it a sin of vanity, but I told her that it was a far greater offense if she were to walk around entirely unclothed, which would eventually be her only alternative.

“You gripe about small vices and miss the bigger picture.” He replied, though my voice was as gentle as a son’s could be. I came to kneel by her side and put my hand upon hers. When she lifted her eyes a glint of gratitude had stolen into her soulful gaze. Encouraged, I continued: “Allow me the transgressions of youth for which I will atone in due time, my dearest. Do not look upon me and see the image of perfection, as they all do. I, too, must strive for improvement at all times. I, too, have an appetite I must restrain. But this does not mean that I would not always do what is best for our children and our mission. And I believe—No, I _know_ that if I were to find Marius, if I could make him see, win him over, we would flourish. We would be legion within the year. All our lost brothers and sisters, corrupted by the world, condemned to Hell by ignorance, could be saved. Allesandra, we could save them all.”

Her eyes darkened with feeling, then, and she took my face into her hands, her hard palms cold as ice against my skin. My bewildered expression didn’t deter her. She kissed my forehead almost as if in reverence. I could feel her heart contract in her chest, a swell of adoration taking her breath away. I didn’t understand what she saw in my words, but they had been all I needed to win back her approval, to have her stroke my hair as lovingly as she had done on the first night we had met. “My Santino,” She sighed against the crown of my head. “Save them all, why don’t you?” Her whisper drowned in the dusty black tangles of my hair and still I heard her clearly, as though the words were spoken directly into my mind. Subdued by her tone, I let her stroke and caress me. I knew she’d never doubt me. “Yes, we could.” Allesandra said. “Not one will be left behind. They can all be saved. They can be saved if you will it so.”

“So allow me this fancy. I’d never lose sight of the truth, I would never dare.” I rose to my feet again, gently removing myself from her grasp despite how a small deprived part of me wished to remain. It was an undercurrent in my mind, aimlessly grasping at the concept of closeness with another. But there was no time to indulge it. I could feel the sun rising on the eastern horizon as clearly as I could feel my dead heart thudding in my chest. I retired long before my restless thoughts did.

Of course, I never thought, not truly, that I might meet Marius in person, if he was even still of this world. No one had ever met him, it seemed. And yet I created such fantasies for myself. I marveled at the countless things he must have seen, the secrets he might possess. What did the world look like to him? And if he was still alive, for some greater purpose as Ramona believed, would the Devil bring us together? For surely a fate of equal significance was awaiting me. I couldn’t imagine anything else. How could I have known that I would so soon find myself in exactly the position I had dreamed of? I should have been more careful what I wish for.


	7. Chapter 7

It was the year of 1482 when he came to Rome. I had been the master of my coven for nearly a century by that time and I had grown accustomed to the trials and tribulations that came with my position. I had conquered cities and burned usurpers. Burning, yes, that was the way. I knew how to expertly dismember a vampire and incinerate the remains within a moment. It was my credo that the master who spoke the sentence should also deal it. I wanted no slaughter among my own children. Before my inner eye I saw the even path I had to follow, the path that would lead me to my destiny and finally, perhaps, to my redemption. 

What can I say now? I couldn’t have known that this year would mark the turning point for our breed, the moment that should finally decide the fate of so many, and my fate as well. Looking back on it, I see the decisions that have led to the tragedies of the modern era, and I know that I had a hand in their design. Had he not come, had we not gone, had I not send the boy to Paris, you see how this goes on and on. Who knows, perhaps the Queen would never have woken, perhaps a French actor would have died of consumption in 1785 and no more would have come of it, perhaps the scholar and his pupil would have lived in peace for many centuries. Or perhaps not. But of course you know the story, the many stories, and you know that Marius de Romanus went to Rome in this year and there is no way to change that.

Allesandra told me of Marius’ arrival a night before he set foot on our cobbled streets. In a hushed whisper she urged me to keep the coven underground, far from hidden places. Great, he was, yes, but deadly. Perhaps she had thought that the stories she told me, the stories I heard from others, would finally drive me away from my fascination with this strange creature. That I would come to see sense and avoid him at all costs. But when I learned of his arrival, I wanted nothing more than to see him. Marius, in Rome. Again in Rome, after one hundred years. No longer the phantom, the legend, but tangible, physical, sharing a reality with me. I could barely believe it. This was my city and he was in it. 

The next night, after leaving the coven in Allesandra’s care, I hurried out into the city. Even if it was a mistake, if it wasn’t Marius at all, it would be my duty to investigate the wanderer. I had no interest in cowering before any creature, no matter how powerful. And duty could so perfectly align with desire at times. I could feel the heartbeat of the elder like vibration sin the ground and it took me every sliver of self-restrained I had cultivated in my years of numinous denial not to seek him out at once. It was an elating feeling, the excitement I felt. It didn’t make me nervous, nothing did, but the feeling swelled in my chest with purpose, a bird spreading its wings. I needed a clear head, a level gaze. I was sure of myself and of my goal, certain that I’d find a kindred spirit in the ancient blood drinker. I had dreamed too often of this meeting to let myself get carried away. 

My bare feet made no sound as they steered me out onto the deserted streets. They lit more fires these nights, illuminating the dark. A brave attempt, I thought, a laudable idea. But not enough to save them from the cold. I pulled up the hood of my robes when I found my way to a piazza. Small crowds had gathered beneath torches and sentries kept a tired eye on the shadow-infested alleyways. A lone empiric passed me by, nodding as if in greeting, but then suddenly startled by the white death mask of a face that stared back at him. How present the awareness of otherness between us in this moment. The man was flush and sweaty beneath his heavy waxen robes, still exhausted from the labor of the day. He had no true medical training, no experience. I could smell the stale blood on him. That was the cure, had always been the cure: flowing blood. Vampires each in their own terms.

I kept my mouth tightly shut and tried not to look at him for too long. It was better to be a specter than a monster. He hurried on and left me to my own errands. I slunk along the edges of the open place, evading attention or else diverting forcefully. Back to the shadows then, back to invisibility. I fled to the rooftops. I didn’t want to be seen by mortals, I wanted to share no space with them. Our worlds should not touch except for the moment of incision, fangs in living flesh. And I was feeling the need for this death touch even now. The nightly sacrifice demanded to be paid, every nerve inside my body pulled me towards the pools of pulsing heat in the market place, the inns, in their beds. I fought the urge down. There would be time later to conduct the holy hunt. I was searching for a different breed of satisfaction now. 

And I found him, of course I did. His heartbeat was like a tolling bell, louder even than Allesandra’s. It was calling to me and repulsing me at the same time. As I approached I made no move to try and conceal myself. I wanted him to see me. He had to see me. Once he was far enough away from any nightly passersby, I slid down from my perch and landed in the alleyway behind him. 

He was the most splendid man I had ever seen. You must understand this. He was swathed in red velvet, intricately patterned. It was the richest color, overwhelming my senses with ease. His hair was gold and long and his hands, unhidden, were pale and smooth. I noticed that he had coated them in some mixture to give them a lively blush. Such an alien creature he was. Before I could speak, he turned around. 

A blaze in his blue eyes, he faced me and I was struck by his beauty, speechless with a quiet awe. I was taller and broader than he was, my body molded by physical labor rather than scholarly pursuits. But he was a scholar in every respect. Slim though not gangly, with a fine forehead and surprisingly northern features. I could see the lines of age faintly on his skin. He couldn’t have been younger than forty when he had been remade in the Dark Blood. 

“Marius,” His name left me as a gasp, a soft whisper. I meant to step closer.

“Damn you!” He snapped suddenly, the mirror image of a cat raising its hackles. “Whoever you are. Leave me. Get away from me. I warn you. Don’t remain in my presence if you want to live.”   
I was stumped. This burst of hostility kept me where I was though I didn’t understand it. But then it dawned on me. He saw my robes and knew of our creed. He had been our coven’s enemy once. Surely he thought I had come to do him harm. Nothing was farther from my mind. Where his agitation grew, I only calmed. 

“Marius,” I said again, asking for his attention. This time I pushed on, slowly approaching the defensive elder. “I have no fear of you. I come to you because we need you. You know who we are.”  
“Worshipers of Satan!” He slung it at me like a curse, but he couldn’t hurt me. I was too elated, still, to merely be in his presence. He was blinded by an old anger but it was nothing to me. “Look at you,” He went on in a show of disgust, regarding my dusty robes, my tangled hair. “If the Christ exists, do you think He pays any attention to you? So you still have your foolish little gatherings. You have your lies.”

He was, admittedly, not quite what I had envisioned. I had expected someone calm, someone above the base motions of fear and hate. How could he have come to be so disdainful of us? I longed to ask, to understand him. I wanted to learn how I could win him. A misunderstanding, no more. He was a pagan, after all, removed from Christ by ignorance or willful denial. I would make him see. I would make him listen. Everyone listened to me.

“Foolish?” I said kindly. “We have never been foolish. We do the work of God as we serve Satan. In this we have our divine purpose on earth. Without Satan how could there have been the Christ?”  
“Get away from me,” He interrupted me hastily, almost distracted. “I want no part of you.” Marius’ eyes wandered slightly, as if he was searching for a way to escape me. He could have done so very easily and yet he didn’t move. I was fascinated. Despite his refusal to listen, he also made no argument to oppose mine. In this I saw an opportunity, a good omen. I had dealt with such mindsets before, people feebly trying to deny the truth I lay before them. Marius was so old; he must be wise enough to see sense. I pushed on as insistently as I dared:

“But don’t you see? If one so old and powerful as you were to become our leader, we could be a legion in the catacombs of this city! As it is, we are a dreadful few.” My own words surprised me though I had not lied. Would I give up my place for him? I had never given that any thought. But yes, I realized at once. Yes, I would. If Marius were to lead us he could do what my youth forbade me. All would come to us if he were the one to call them. My heart swelled with this naïve hope and when I looked at Marius there was no trace of dishonesty on my face. I wanted this, I wanted him. More than anything. 

“You want to be a legion?” He went on after a tense moment of silence. “You talk nonsense. I was alive when no one spoke of Satan and no one spoke of a Christ. You’re merely blood drinkers, and you make up stories for yourselves. How could you believe that I would come to you and lead you?”

Ah, so that was the crux. As the old in the villages shunned new medicines, so the old of our demonic race shunned revelations. Marius had not been brought into this undead existence under the banner of the holy faith. He had lived in a savage, wild world and he had been made savage and wild by it. And now he feared the truth because it was unfamiliar to him, because it promised consequences. I couldn’t grudge him that. I wanted to teach him, to show him the ways. It could not be too late for him if only he submitted finally to the call of our Lord Satan. If he couldn’t hear it, I would speak for it instead.

“Come to us in our catacombs,” I implored him softly as I reached out my hands to him, though I doubt I would have dared to touch him. I spoke as gently as I would to a frightened child. “Come and see us and be a part of our ritual. Sing with us tomorrow night before we go out to hunt.” I invited him. What could I say to convince him? Which corrupt belief in his ancient mind prevented him from opening up to me, allowing me in? 

Still he shook his head. My heart beat furiously in my chest, trembling with eagerness. I simply went on: “My name is Santino. I have heard of you for a hundred years. I have dreamt of the moment when we would come upon each other. Satan has brought us together. You must lead us. Only to you would I give up my leadership. Come see my lair with its hundreds of skulls. Come see my followers who worship the Beast with all their hearts. It is the wish of the Beast that you should lead us. It is the wish of God.” 

My words were breathless as a bout of passion got hold of me. It was too much to bear, the weight of destiny. I was so certain that this moment would change everything. If only he would come with me. Marius, what must I do? 

The ancient Roman was silent for another while, studying me. But the brightness of understanding, of awakening, didn’t enter his steady gaze. He only seemed to burrow deeper into his own mind, away from me, away from my outstretched arms. He didn’t want me, it was clear to see, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

“Your lair with its hundreds of skulls?” He mocked me now. His voice had turned to steel. “You think I wish to rule there? Tonight I have seen paintings of such beauty I can’t describe them to you. Magnificent works rich in color and brilliance. This city surrounds me with its beautiful allurements.” He made a brief gesture, indicating the entirety of Rome. 

How strange. Despite myself I couldn’t help a tug of curiosity, my eternal vice: “Where did you see such paintings?” 

“In the Pope’s chapel.” 

This time I didn’t get closer. I stopped in my tracks, as if struck by his hand. My heart nearly leapt out of my chest in fear. A chapel? There was no way. “But how did you dare to go there?”  
“It was nothing for me to do such a thing. I can teach you to use your powers—”

“But we are creatures of the dark!” I objected, horrified by such a transgression. How was he standing here at all? How did Marius sin against the Lord in such a way and live? I couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t understand what he was saying. “We must never go into places of light. God has cursed us to the shadows.” I argued when I saw that he didn’t even seem to comprehend the severity of his crime. What manner of being was he? 

“What god?” He scoffed. This time it hurt. “I go wherever I will. I drink the blood of those who are evil. And the world belongs to me.” Such horrific things he said to me and he only went on and on: “And you ask me to come down into the earth with you? Into a catacomb full of skulls? You ask me to rule blood drinkers in the name of a demon? You are too clever for your creed, my friend. Forsake it.”

It was like a punch to the gut. A hiss of air left my lungs as he retreated from him. This went beyond ignorance, beyond simple lack of understanding. He was tempting me with such worldly things, boasting as if his depravity was a badge of honor! And yet he spat on us? If I had not been so shocked I might have grown angry. 

“No.” I said. “Ours is a satanic purity. And you,” I ground my teeth, I swallowed the budding grief. I could forgive all things but this cruelty. It brought the most unbidden thoughts to my treacherous mind and I was suddenly weakened as if starved. Had I not been a man once? Did I not delight in the sound of worldly music? Didn’t I want to see colors and forms until I was drunk on them? But these things were not for me, never for me. Not for any of us! I was aghast at his disrespect. “You cannot tempt me from it, not with all your power and your tricks! Still I give my welcome to you.” I was almost in wonder of myself. And it became finally clear to me what Allesandra’s warnings had been about. She had never feared for my life, had she? Only for my soul. Marius would gladly condemn it to Hell.

“You’ll never be a legion. The world will never allow it. You’re nothing. Give up your trappings. Don’t make other blood drinkers to join this foolish crusade.” He went on blithely. 

With heavy breath I stood, watching him, half-bewitched, half terrified. It wasn’t that easy. It couldn’t be so simple. There were laws, and there was order in the world. And those who abandoned their post would fall in flame. I was not the foolish one, no. How could he say such things? I forced myself to look up, look him in the eye, see it for myself. His mind was old, oh yes, very old. But there was not a mind that I could not see. My powers slithered around the barriers of his thoughts, deflected by flashes of trivial memories. I went on in my search as I listened though I thought I wasn’t. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. 

“We are so gifted. There is so much to be observed, to be learned. Let me take you back with me into the Pope’s chapel to see the paintings I have described.” He whispered, as once the serpent had whispered into Eve’s ear. I wanted to run. I wanted to despair. But I listened. I listened to the words behind the words, to the soft whisper, the undercurrent. No, he couldn’t hide it from me. 

And then there it was. A split-second, a mirage. A pair of thrones, and creatures upon the thrones. It was buried deep in his mind, the very one thing he clung to as he tried to dischain me from mine. His faith. This was what he believed in? 

“Those Who Must Be Kept.” I tasted the words on my tongue, the strangeness of them. “What are they?” 

I could not describe to you the way in which this struck fear into Marius. A secret, unveiled again. A secret he had sworn to keep. Now it stood between us like a hostile stranger. Marius blanched beneath his useless disguise, and his eyes widened in terror. For once he saw something worth note in me and if it was the only thing he’d ever see.

“You will never know.” He all but hissed at me, his beguiling singsong tone of voice crudely torn asunder by shock and disbelief. It was almost satisfying to see him suddenly so shaken.  
“No, listen to me,” I pressed as I stepped closer, fascinated by this ancient riddle. Those Who Must Be Kept, Those Who Must Be Kept. I turned the words over in my mind, tried to take them apart, put them back together, inspect them from all angles. “Are they something profane? Or are they holy?” 

The moment I spoke I saw the intent spark in his mind. He grabbed at me at once but I knew where he would reach and slipped away from his grasp. His fear was mounting into fury and this time I couldn’t escape him. He grabbed me hard, tearing into the old fabric of my robe. For once I felt a sting of fear for my life. I clawed at his hands as he dragged me to the stairs that led down the hill behind him. I saw what he meant to do and desperately searched for footing. 

“Never come near me again, do you hear? I can kill you by fire with my mind if I choose it. And why don’t I choose it?” He hissed in my ear, finally transformed into the monster I had once only glimpsed the shadow of. I looked at him as he snarled his threats. I couldn’t tell you what I was feeling in that moment, in the grasp of this savage idolater. I was hurt. I was furious. 

The next thing I knew was the hard blow against my chest as he shoved me down the stairway. I instinctively ducked my head to feather the fall. When I landed on the ground, my entire body was aching. I couldn’t listen to the pain in my bones, though. I struggled to my feet at once, grabbing at the wall to steady myself. When I looked up again, at Marius standing above me, I all but bared my teeth at him. I had never felt such sheer outrage, such wrath. I was entirely consumed by it. What an arrogant, savage creature! A savage, yes. What else could he be when he answered my welcome with insult and injury? A savage wearing a noble’s face, a sorcerer and heretic. There was nothing to be said for this monstrous beast. My head was swimming with contempt. I wanted my teeth in his heart.   
“I curse you, Marius!” I snarled at him, utterly overcome by my own helplessness. Who was he to judge me? He was nobody! I didn’t care how powerful he was. The Devil himself would drag him to Hell for this. “I curse you and your damnable secrets.” 

“I warn you, stay away from me, Santino!” He still meant to berate me. He still played the teacher. I felt faint with hatred. “Be wanderers through time, be witnesses of all splendid and beautiful things. Do what you will, but whatever you do, stay clear of me for your own sake.” 

As I stared up at him, curses and insults filling my mind, he suddenly narrowed his eyes as if something had caught his attention. I flinched and looked down. A red flame flicked up at me, filling my field of vision. Fire, my senses howled in alarm. My very clothing was burning. It climbed up the fabric, a sickening stench filling my nose. Horrified, I tore the robes off me. Anything but fire!   
I flung the smoldering tatters to the ground and retreated from them, afraid that they might suddenly burst into flames anew. From above the voice of Marius came to me once more: “Know what I could do to you. And stay away.” 

 

I didn’t know what expression was etched onto my features when I returned to the catacombs that night. I couldn’t have said how I retained the composure it needed to perform even the most menial task. I had put the robes back on, it wasn’t like I had much of a choice. I smelled of smoke and blood when I returned, and the worried curious looks of my followers were nothing but dead masks to me. One tried to approach me as I strode past him but another held him back as if in fear. Yes, why not? Fear me, if you will. I had been far too lenient for far too long. 

I was pacing in my cell, muttering to myself as I had sometimes come to do. Anger coursed through my veins like a potent drug, and it had nowhere to go. I felt dizzy with it all. Was I relieved to have survived this fool’s errand? In a sense, yes. But that wasn’t the reason for my racing pulse and my heavy breath. Marius. The name had turned from balm into acid. Marius. I repeated the shameful events of this night to myself over and over. It had something of running myself through with my own blade, but anger was like poison smoke. Once you were high on it, you wanted to stay high. I was still senselessly moving back and forth when Allesandra slipped into the chamber, silent as ever. Her face was full of sorrow as she watched me and even that I couldn’t stand. To her credit, she didn’t scold me for my foolishness, and didn’t ask me to recognize that she had told me it would turn out this way. She simply stayed by the door and waited, either for me to calm down or to breach the subject. I was in no mood for calmness.

“I will hurt him for this.” I said through gritted teeth. My jaw was aching with the force I needed to keep it shut. “I will find him and I will harm him. I don’t care what I must do. I want every single one of his precious little pleasures to turn to ashes.”

“Will you tell me what happened?” Allesandra asked. 

“No.”

“Santino…” 

How put-upon she could sound, how wretchedly mothering. I despised her in this moment. I wanted to be left alone with my bitterness, my ugly disillusionment, and nurse my wounds in peace. I wanted no witnesses. But the sting of my disdain was also what shook me out of my outraged trance. This was Allesandra, the only person I could truly trust. I was not angry at her.   
With some conscious effort, I managed to relax my stance and look over at her. This was enough of an invitation for her to come to me and put her arms around me. She stroked my hair as she always did when I was upset and I allowed it. It was familiar at least, although not very soothing. 

“You were right.” I finally conceded, my voice muffled by her hair. “I found Marius, and I spoke to him and he revealed himself to be nothing but a heretic and pagan savage. I dreamed a perfect creature, I spun fairytales like a child. It serves me right for giving myself to such fancies. I see this now. My heart is broken, I believe.”  
“I am sorry. But now this matter will finally be put aside and we can—”

“No.” I interjected, as gently as I could. Then I untangled myself from her to speak freely. “No, this matter will not be put aside. For all the heresy he spoke, he has made it clear to me what we still lack and what threats await us as we move into the world. We are too ignorant of what surrounds us, too oblivious to the ways of the worldly sinners. He tempted me with such desirable things, Allesandra. Such things…” 

Her features hardened as she looked at me, a warning as subtle as it was adequate. I quickly continued: “Don’t misunderstand. He could never have said anything to drive me from the righteous path. He didn’t. His brazen offers disgusted me. But he was so boastful of it. There is no doubt he will find weaker minds, weaker hearts, and turn them away from God.” Even as I said it, the words were bitter to me. “Lucio was right, you know? He is an enemy to us all. Maybe he would not kill us, but he would gladly condemn us to Hell. He must be stopped.”  
“What are you saying? Santino, I ask you to be sensible.” A fearful tone had slipped into her voice and I couldn’t understand why she would be hesitant now when she had only ever pushed me forward. It insulted me and I was quick to fire back.

“I’m not afraid of him. He is but one man and he, too, has something to lose.” I insisted. “We are few now, far too few, but we shall grow in numbers. He does not consider us worthy of his attention. He does not consider us even worthy of destruction. We are nothing to him. He means to carry on, squandering the powers given to him by our Lord. He thinks himself invincible. But he will come to see that he has made a grave error of judgment. I don’t care what it takes. I will not suffer him to live.”

For many hours Allesandra and I sat together thereafter, pondering Marius’ secret of Those Who Must Be Kept. I made my plans known to her, that my goal was not only to unite the vampires of our times in a single cause but also to purify them. Evil was running rampant in the world, unchecked, submitting to no laws, venerating idols and spitting on the holy faith. It was chaos. I would bring order. 

And Marius, great ancient Marius, would burn.


End file.
